Noted crime fiction writer and critic H.R.F. Keating died from heart failure on March 27, 2011. Keating was 84. "He was famous in England for being the kindest, sweetest person in the mystery community,” commented his long-time friend Otto Penzler, founder of Manhattan's Mysterious Bookshop, in a March 30, 2011 New York Times obituary.
Born in in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, England on October 31, 1926, Keating published his first novel, Death and the Visiting Firemen, in 1959. Other standalone mysteries followed, for which he gained wide acclaim. It was not until 1964, though, with the release of The Perfect Murder, that his fame spread to the United States.
The Perfect Murder introduced the gentle, unassuming Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay Police Department. The work won Keating both an Edgar® Special Award from the Mystery Writers of America and a Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers Association (CWA).
Keating later received a second CWA Gold Dagger for The Murder of the Maharajah (1980), his twelfth Inspector Ghote book. Keating would go on to write a total of 26 books in this series, with his final Inspecter Ghote novel being A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? (2009).
While publishing his Inspector Ghote series, Keating continued to write other fictional works, including Jack the Lady Killer (1999), a detective novel in written in verse. He also began a second mystery series featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harriet Martens of England’s Birchester Police Force. The seven books in the Harriet Martens series were published from 2000-2007.
Keating’s nonfiction included his crime fiction reviews, written from 1967-1983 for the London Times. Among his critical works were Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime (1977), Sherlock Holmes, the Man and His World (1979), Whodunit? A Guide to Mystery, Suspense and Crime Fiction (1982), Writing Crime Fiction (1986) and Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books (1987). In 1996 the Crime Writers Association recognized Keating with its lifetime achievement award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger.
Keating’s passing is mourned by his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, whom he married in 1953, by their three sons, Simon, Piers and Hugo, by their daughter, Bryony, and by their nine grandchildren. Obituaries published in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Telegraph testify to the regret with which the crime fiction community also faces his loss.
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