The False Inspector Dew

Description

A standalone novel from the critically acclaimed Peter Lovesey. The False Inspector Dew was the winner of the 1982 CWA Gold Dagger. It is 1921, and Alma Webster, a reader of romances, is passionately in love with her dentist, Walter Baranov. There is only one foreseeable outcome: the murder of his wife. Inspired by the real-life Dr Crippen case, they plot a way to achieve it perfectly aboard the ocean liner, Mauretania. With a fine sense of irony, Baranov takes the identity of Inspector Dew, Crippen's nemesis. But when a murder is reported aboard the ship and 'Inspector Dew' is invited to investigate, the complications begin. Listed in The Times' 100 Best Crime Novels of the Twentieth Century.

Peter Lovesey is the only living author in Britain to have received the two highest honours in crime writing - the Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers Association and Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. He started with the Sergeant Cribb series set in Victorian London and later progressed to modern times with the award-winning Peter Diamond books set in Bath, his home for almost twenty years. Now living in Shrewsbury with his wife Jax, whom he met at Reading University, he continues to reach and entertain new readers across the world.

An extraordinarily clever, fascinating novel ... Compulsively readable - Colin Dexter Absolutely riveting ... I read The False Inspector Dew because I couldn't resist it and now I wish I'd saved it for the weekend. He's such a stylish, lucid writer, and wickedly clever as well, with a wonderful knack of springing really astonishing surprises ... A masterpiece. I defy anyone to foresee the outcome - Ruth Rendell The sort of book that ought to be a bestseller and deserves to be - HRF Keating, The Times Oh, what a lovely crime this is - Washington Post Brilliant ... stunning - Evening Standard Impossible to put down ... We dare you not to smile and smile again as wicked entertainer Lovesey sails through each roll and turn of the transatlantic crossing - Kirkus Reviews Lovesey's masterpiece thus far and one of the best mysteries ever written, one that opens up new possibilities for the genre - Dictionary of Literary Biography