Peter Lovesey, The False Inspector Dew 1st London ed., 1982
A sumptuous leather rebinding with five raised bands with marble sides, additional page approved and signed by the author.
1/12 deluxe issued by the Scorpion Press.
A classic detective story, Gold Dagger Winner, voted # 27 in the all time list of one hundred best crime novels, admired by many illustrious names of the crime-writing world including Ruth Rendell, Colin Dexter and H R F Keating.
Lovesey is possibly the last of the classic detective writers still at work. He began with the Sergeant Cribb Victorian series in the 1970s. But from the 90s he has concentrated in the Peter Diamond contemporary police detective series.
His is widely admired by fans who meet him at crime conventions, and for his ocassional after dinner impersonations of crime writers of the past including John Creasey.
Plotline: Around the ocean liner Mauritania, sailing for New York in 1921, an unassuming dentist, Walter Baranov, nerves himself to chloroform his domineering wife and push her out of a porthole. The idea is that he and his lover Alma, who is stowed away, will then pose as a police inspector and his wife. It is a refinement of the real-life Dr Crippen case, and with a nice sense of irony Walter borrows the name of the inspector that arrested Crippen. A body is recovered and murder is suspected. The ship’s captain asks Walter to lead the investigation. He makes a show of being the false inspector Dew. Can the devious amateur sleuth find the murderer?
To be distributed to subscribers in September.
Also available, Peter Lovesey’s The Last Detective, Scorpion Press 1992. This is the first Peter Diamond and contains a special four-page introduction by Lovesey on his path and development as a writer. We have some of the deluxe lettered 1/15 at £160 (see featured image) and some of the ordinary signed limited of 99 copies at £50. Please let us know if you would like either of these.
