The Punjab in India, 1935. The sub-continent under the Raj. Fresh from his English boarding school, Jack Steele is a new recruit to the Indian Imperial Police and soon begins to acquire the attitudes of old India hands towards the people under their rule. Only a few months into his posting, Jack has to conduct a murder investigation when one of the British community at his Station, the sexually rapacious widow Milly Marchbanks, is found strangled. To Jack's consternation, the only clue implicates a member of the Station Club. But which one? While Jack goes round in circles, his self-effacing Indian sergeant, Bulaki Ram, discreetly nudges him along the way he needs to go, as little by little he learns that all is not as it seems.
H.R.F. Keating is best known for his long series of Inspector Ghote mysteries set in India, but Jack, the Lady Killer is something completely different as well as completely unexpected. It is one of the rarest forms known to literature, a detective novel in verse, Keating developing his rhyme-crime in nearly 300 fourteen-line stanzas.
Jack, the Lady Killer costs £7.99 and was published in September 1999.
ISBN: 978-1-873226-36-0
During a long and distinguished writing career, H.R.F. Keating won many honours, most notably the award of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 1996 for a lifetime's achievement. Between 1985 and 2001 he was president of the Detection Club in succession to some of the greats of British crime fiction: G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Julian Symons. He was especially well known as the creator of Inspector Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D., hero of 21 crime novels, and as the author of eleven other crime novels, four mainstream novels and numerous short stories. He was awarded the American George N. Dove Award in 1995. The Perfect Murder (1964 – made into a film by Merchant Ivory), the first book about Inspector Ghote, and The Murder of the Maharajah (1980) were both awarded the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. He was the Chairman of the Crime Writers Association from 1970–1971 and an Edgar Allan Poe special award winner. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and served on its Council. Harry Keating died on 27 March 2011.
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