Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating (born 31 October 1926) is an English crime fiction writer most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.
Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating, known as Harry to his family and friends, was born in St. Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex and typed out his first story at the age of eight. He was educated at Merchant Taylor's School in London and later Trinity College, Dublin. H.R.F. Keating In 1956 he moved to London to work as a journalist on the Daily Telegraph newspaper. He was the crime books reviewer for The Times newspaper for fifteen years. He was Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) (1970—71), Chairman of the Society of Authors (1983—84) and President of the Detection Club (1985—2000). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the George N. Dove Award in 1995. In 1996 the CWA awarded him the Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature. Keating is not only a durably successful crime novelist, but he has also written screenplays, is an accomplished reviewer and wrote a biography of Dame Agatha Christie entitled Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime.
On his 80th birthday in 2006, members of the Detection Club honored him with an anthology, Verdict of Us All (published by Crippen & Landru in the United States, Allison & Busby in the United Kingdom).
He lives in London with his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell. For more information on Keating, please visit his website: http://hrfkeating.com/
Keating's first four novels were published by Gollancz. With his fifth novel, Death of a Fat God (1963), he moved to Collins Crime Club, with whom he stayed for the next twenty years.
Inspector Ghote
Inspector Ganesh Ghote is an inspector in the Mumbai Police who appeared in twenty-four novels. The first was The Perfect Murder (1964), which won a Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award and was nominated for an Edgar Award. It was later made into a film by Merchant Ivory. Keating intended Ghote's final appearance to be in the novel Breaking and Entering (2000), but brought the character back in Inspector Ghote's First Case (2008).
Keating did not visit India until ten years after he started writing about it. Who's who in Steamy East and related fiction (Google Cached version of 30 June 2006) - which references Meera Tamaya H.R.F. Keating: Post-Colonial Detection (A Critical Study) Bowling Green (OH): Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1993: "Keating wrote the first nine Ghote stories before his first visit to the country -- and having been there he found it more difficult to write" (page 23).
Evelyn Hervey
In the mid-eighties Keating published three novels with Weidenefeld under the pseudonym Evelyn Hervey.
DCI Harriet Martens
Harriet Martens is a Detective Chief Inspector who earns the nickname "The Hard Detective" because of the tough image that she adopts to survive in the masculine world of UK policing. This toughness inspired her to start a "Stop the Rot" campaign that successfully reduced local crime but angered some violent criminals to the extent that they start murdering her officers. In the second book she falls in love with a fellow officer while investigating the murder of the UK's top tennis player. With her job under threat she fights to prove her worth in the third book.
Other novels
In 1978 Keating published A Long Walk to Wimbledon, a science-fiction novel about a man trekking across a ruined London to save his estranged wife.
In the 1990s Keating wrote several novels about UK police detectives whose human weaknesses adversely affect their work. The first of these was The Rich Detective (1993) in which Detective Inspector Bill Sylvester of South Mercia Police investigates an anonymous allegation that a local antiques dealer is murdering old ladies after persuading them to change their wills in his favour.In A Bad Detective (1996) Detective Sergeant Jack Stallworthy is a corrupt police officer who is planning his retirement to Devon when a businessman offers him an entire tropical island in return for stealing an incriminating file from the Fraud Investigations Office at police headquarters.
In September 1999 Flambard Press published his verse novel Jack, the Lady Killer.
Non-fiction
His guide to Writing Crime Fiction (1986) was based on his analysis of the development of the genre from the 1920s to the 1990s. It includes guidance on fictional structure, the plot and its characters, and on submitting a script to publishers.
