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 12th 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
