H.R.F.Keating R.I.P.

The death last Saturday of H.R.F. Keating has robbed us of a giant of the genre. Much has already been said by obituarists about his novels, featuring Inspector Ghote and others, which earned two CWA Gold Daggers, so I’d like to focus on other aspects of his career.

He was both imaginative and daring in his work. He wrote a long crime story in verse and dreamed up an unlikely but effective sleuth in the cleaner Mrs Craggs. His prose style was sometimes quirky, and very good at getting points across. And his work was full of ideas that gave clues to his considerable intellect.

Harry was not only a prolific reviewer, but an insightful commentator on the crime genre. He edited a book of excellent essays about Agatha Christie, a collection of stories honouring Julian Symons, two CWA anthologies, a study of crime writers past and present, and a first rate pot pourri called Who-Dun-It - as well as choosing 100 classics of the genre for a book that contained short and pithy accounts of why those particular stories would stand the test of time. He wrote with affection about the Golden Age in Murder Must Appetise.

I found him personally generous and kind. He provided a quote for the cover of The Devil in Disguise, and he and his wife Sheila Mitchell invited me to be their guest at the top table at Malice Domestic the night he received a lifetime achievement award. In latter years, we shared a publisher. Most recently, I enjoyed their company at Detection Club dinners. I shall miss him, but remember him with affection and admiration.

CADS 56

I mentioned the latest issue of that terrific magazine CADS the other day and I’ve been dipping into it, as usual, with great pleasure. The range of articles is as wide as ever. Examples include an excellent piece by Dick Stewart on Little Dorrit, a book which I have to own up to never having read. There’s a history of the spy story, an examination of the crime novels of Macdonald Hastings by the indefatigable Philip Scowcroft, and an account of the first Dennis Wheatley Convention. I’m not really a fan of Wheatley, but his Murder Dossiers were a fascinating idea, and there is an article about them on my website.

A number of current crime novelists read and contribute to CADS. Among them is Harry Keating, who has written an entertaining piece about the return of Inspector Ghote, his most popular character, in A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? Marvin Lachman continues his features about mystery series characters who have made the transition from printed page to television, and includes a long list of recent genre-related obituaries. There’s an intriguing article by John Herrington called ‘The Case of the Novel that Never Was’, about a banned detective story of the 30s, and a range of short reviews by the phenomenally knowledgeable Bob Adey.

Bob Cornwell contributes an assessment of reviews of crime novels published in 2008, and does an extremely interesting Q&A with Len Deighton, but the emphasis of the magazine is on books and short stories of the past. There’s a continuation of Nick Kimber’s article about S.S. Van Dine and Philo Vance, while an academic with a great interest in crime fiction, B.J. Rahn, writes about ‘The Mystery of Ernest Bramah’.

Bramah, by the way, created the blind detective Max Carrados – but his first book was English Farming and Why I Turned It Up. Later, he published A Guide to the Varieties and Rarity of English Royal Copper Coins. Who says crime writers can’t be versatile?