A Sergeant Cribb mystery

Grand Prix de Littérature Policière Winner, 1985

After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian bestseller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. The novel begins, however, with skinny-dipping (under another name) by some student teachers. By chance one of them finds herself a witness in a case of murder. The suspects? Three men in a boat.

When Cribb and Thackeray take to the river in pursuit, nobody will take them seriously. However, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1976
UK Paperback: Penguin, 1978
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1976
US Paperback: Penguin, 1978
Latest UK edition: Arrow, 1991
Latest US edition: Soho Press, June, 2010

“Here’s charm and delight. A puzzle postlude to
Three Men in a Boat.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“Thames-side summer scenes plus real who-and-why puzzle add up to period piece of engaging charm.”
Francis Goff, Sunday Telegraph

“Lovely flavour of the time … ‘Naked? Completely, darling. In the buff. It’s awfully good fun.’ And so it all is.”
George Duthie, The Scotsman

“The most light-hearted, but by no means the least compelling, of Lovesey’s books.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times

“A relaxed and easy-going book, complete with traditional mystery traditionally solved. Enlivening the proceedings is a pert and attractive young lady who knows exactly what she wants.”
Newgate Callendar, New York Times

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

For my second novel I stayed with sport as a background, this time bare-knuckle boxing. This form of pugilism was forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, confirmed by a headless body in the Thames whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is chosen to infiltrate the gang and he has to submit to a rigorous programme of purging, pickling and training. Moreover, Cribb needs to intervene at the crucial time to prevent young Jago from being battered to death.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1971
UK Paperback: Panther, 1972
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1971
US Paperback: Dell, 1972
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2018
Latest US paperback: Soho Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-56947-524-9

“The Detective Wore Silk Drawers will establish the Historical Thriller as securely as Mrs Christie established her own particular brand of whodunit.”
Whitefriar, Smith’s Trade News

“A gorgeous piece of period reconstruction … all the details of pickling and purging, gymnastics and ‘coming up to scratch’ worked into an exciting plot.”
Violent Grant, Daily Telegraph

“A splendid thick-ear thriller in the literal sense.”
Matthew Coady, The Guardian

“A rich and unusual mystery, with suspense enough for the most confirmed addict.”
Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

A Sergeant Cribb novel

CWA Silver Dagger Winner, 1978
Filmed for television by Granada, 1979

By her own confession, Miriam Cromer is a murderess. She is sentenced to death and the hangman travels to London to earn his fee. Then the Home Office is sent a photograph that casts doubt on the confession. The matter must be investigated, and fast. Sergeant Cribb is called in and his investigations produce nothing to ease the minds of the authorities. As he plunges deeper into the relationships and history of the small group connected with the murder, he becomes increasingly suspicious that something very different happened at Park Lodge, Kew Green, on 12^th March, 1888.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1978
UK Paperback: Penguin, 1979
US Publisher: Pantheon, 1978
US Paperback: Penguin, 1980
Latest US edition, Soho Press, June, 2010

“I have read Waxwork. It is a very clever book. I am not an expert in this kind of literature but it seems to me that this stands pretty high. I congratulate you.”
Rt. Hon. Harold Macmillan, OM

“I couldn’t put it down. I read it at a sitting – or rather, a lying, for I was in the garden at the time and got so absorbed I didn’t notice the sun had burnt the skin off my back! Waxwork is quite the best novel of detection I have read for a long time.”
Ruth Rendell

“Lovesey’s backtwist plotting is pure Christie, but the style, the detail and the deadpan horror are all his own – and absolutely marvellous.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Peter Lovesey triumphs again.”
Graham Lord, Sunday Express

“… excels himself.”
Maurice Richardson, The Observer

“As good a crime entertainment as you could wish for.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“One that can stand among Peter Lovesey’s best.”
Maghanita Laski, The Listener

“Marvellously authentic.”
Washington Post

At once charming, chilling and convincing as if it had unfolded in the Police Intelligence column of April, 1888.”
Michael Demarest, Time

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

Winner of the Macmillan/Panther First Crime Novel Prize, 1970
Listed in the Hatchards Top 100 Crime Novels
Listed in the Mystery Writers of America Top 100 Mystery Novels

Drawing on my interest in the history of athletics, I set this first novel in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, in 1879, where a bizarre six-day endurance race takes place. “Wobbles” became popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1880s.

A strange collection of so-called “proven pedestrians” starts at 1am on a November Monday morning. By Tuesday one of them is dead. Tetanus from infection of a foot blister is suspected at first, but when Sergeant Cribb from Scotland Yard is called in he discovers that strychnine was being given as a stimulant. This is only the first of a series of revelations.

The £1000 competition launched the Macmillan crime list in 1970 edited by Lord Hardinge of Penshurst. There were about 250 entries. On publication day, a 24-hour charity “wobble” was staged around Sloane Square, started by actress Barbara Windsor and the author.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1970
UK Paperback: Panther, 1971
US Publisher, Dodd, Mead, 1970
US Paperback: Dell, 1971
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2018 (with new afterword) 978-0751572520
Latest US hardback: Soho Press, 2020 (50th Anniversary Edition) ISBN 978-1641292245

“Here are true Victorians, not pious frauds of legend. A first-rate story of sustained thrill.”
John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

“Nobody ever invented it once again better than that.”
James Crumley, interviewed in The Guardian

“First prize-winner, and a worthy one … excellently done.”
Edmund Crispin, Sunday Times

“Brilliantly evocative … It is long since I came across so original a setting.”
Cyril Ray, The Spectator

“Don’t miss this. It will be on all the best lists.”
Dorothy B Hughes, Los Angeles Times

“A brilliant reconstruction.”
Maurice Richardson, The Observer

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

(First US title – “The Tick Of Death”)

The year is 1884 and a series of bomb blasts has caused mayhem in London. The perpetrators are Irishmen seeking independence. One of the “infernal machines” has even bombed the CID office at Scotland Yard. Worse, Constable Thackeray is suspected of conspiring with the terrorists.

Reluctantly Sergeant Cribb attends a course in the science of bomb-making and infiltrates the Dynamite Party. Based on the real events in London in 1884-5, the story had its own resonance ninety years on.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1974
UK Paperback: Penguin, 1976
US Publisher, as THE TICK OF DEATH: Dodd, Mead, 1974
US Paperback: Penguin, 1976
Latest UK edition: Allison & Busby, 2002 ISBN 074900-552-1
Latest US edition as The Tick of Death: Soho Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-56947-596-6

“Irish bombers of 1884. Lovesey goes from strength to strength. A really entertaining extravaganza, judged to a nicety.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“The period detail is admirable: the narrative both witty and swift.”
Edmund Crispin, Sunday Times

“Tense and dramatic. The best book I have read for a long time.”
Birmingham Evening Mail

“Cribb Takes a course in explosives, infiltrates the mob and brings things to a happy conclusion. It’s fun.”
New York Times

“Finally, my tribute to a single author all of whose books have delighted me – this appreciation known as the Uncoveted Offord Award – goes to Peter Lovesey, whose novels with Victorian backgrounds are at once fresh, very funny and cleverly plotted. Mr Lovesey’s 1974 book was THE TICK OF DEATH, and his publishers are Dodd, Mead. Please sir, I want some more!”
Lenore Glen Offord, San Francisco Examiner Chronicle