H. R. F. Keating (Henry Raymond Fitzwalter Keating) Biography

British crime writer, born in St Leonards, educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He worked as a journalist and during 1967–83 reviewed crime novels for The Times. His first four books are original, occasionally almost surrealist, detective stories (for example, Zen There Was Murder, 1960; A Rush on the Ultimate, 1961), but in 1964 he published The Perfect Murder, the first of a long and successful series of semihumorous novels, set mainly in India, in which the detective is Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay CID. Other titles include Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade (1966), Filmi, Filmi, Inspector Ghote (1976), Inspector Ghote Draws a Line (1979), Dead on Time (1988), and The Iciest Sin (1990). His best novel, however, is probably The Murder of the Maharajah (1980), set in the India of the 1930s and in which Ghote does not appear. Keating is also the author of many short stories, and has written widely on detective fiction (Murder Must Appetize, 1975; Sherlock Holmes: The Man and His World, 1979).