Showing results by author "H.R.F. Keating" in All Categories

British detective writer H. R. F. Keating was best known as the creator of Inspector Ghote of the Mumbai CID. He won two Crime Writers’ Association Gold Daggers, and in 1996 was awarded the Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement. Included here are dramatisations of two of his most popular murder mysteries, set in 1930s India and Victorian London, plus a short clip from Radio 4’s Bookshelf featuring the award-winning author.

Sent to a remote part of India to find out who could benefit from Judge Asif's death, Ghote can get no cooperation from the judge until it becomes evident that the anonymous threats are coming from someone in the judge's household.

This was no ordinary murder, for the victim was Frank Masters, millionaire and philanthropist. The case was bound to attract much public attention. But Inspector Ghote finds that his demands for evidence are met with nothing but lies and evasions.

In a small, provincial town in the heart of India, a politician’s wife has done her husband’s career a great service, by dying under suspicious circumstances. That the corpse and the trail have been cold for fifteen years hasn’t saved Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID from being sent to investigate. But what chance does he have when his chief suspect is so powerful, when the whole district is against him, and when a holy man is fasting to the death to protest his prying?

A princely state in India, 1930, under the British raj. To Bhopore and its opulent Summer Palace comes a handful of Western visitors to meet the outrageous Maharajah and his entourage. There they meet the Maharajah's heir, the sensual Porgy, and his English chorus-girl mistress. They meet the enigmatic chief minister--and the aloof British resident, with his dignified little nine-year-old son. And before long they also meet sudden death....

It was six-thirty in the morning when Detective Superintendent Harriet Martens took the call that informed her that Britain’s number one tennis star and media darling, the wonderfully pretty Bubbles Xingara, has been murdered in the grounds of her big country house. Harriet is now in charge of a case that will have the world’s media – already massing for the start of Wimbledon out in force.

Inspector Ghote of the Bombay police has been regulated to antipickpocket patrol, where he promptly gets himself into one of those fearful fixes which are equally the product of his faults and his virtues.

Some crooks have tried to snatch the plump son of a business tycoon, and have accidentally made off with his playmate instead. But they're not changing their plan: a payment is to be delivered to them or a small corpse is to be delivered to Inspector Ghote. But what kind of ransom can a mere tailor's boy demand? And, as something more unpleasant than just a ransom note arrives from the kidnappers, are the police helping to keep the boy in one piece?

Who wanted him? What for? Why was Roger Farrar (if that was his name) on the run in Dublin? Was he a traitor and deserted? The innocent target of a kidnap plot? Or a lonely persecuted paranoiac? One thing is certain: he is likely to suffer a fate worse than death if he is caught by the gross villain who specialises in brain-washing.

Inspector Ghote comes to London. The Indian police inspector is to attend an international conference on drug smuggling, and in cold, drizzling London he is faced with his first case outside India - and it's a very odd case.

Inspector Ghote embarks on one of his strangest cases when he is ordered to prevent a murder - the killing of a precious flamingo in the Bombay zoo. And then there is the racehorse fancied to win the local Derby, which gets replaced by a donkey... Ghote finds things going disastrously as bit by bit he unearths the traces of a monstrous practical joker. But then the fun stops - and Inspector Ghote has a more serious murder on his hands.

A grisly murder has plunged Bollywood, the film capital of India, into chaos. Ghote gets so caught up with giving an Academy Award-winning performance as a sleuth that the curtain almost comes down on his own life.

Newly promoted Inspector Ghote is thrilled to be granted casual leave until he takes up his post, as it allows him to spend time with his heavily pregnant wife, who is desperate to watch a showing of Hamlet at the cinema. Their plans are ruined, however, since Sir Rustom Engineer requires Ghote to investigate the suicide of his friend's wife. Worried about his wife's imminent delivery, Ghote nevertheless travels to the home of Mr. Dawkins, where he is unconvinced by the story of Iris Dawkins' death.

An American visitor to India is killed on the road from Bombay to Poona. Called in to investigate the murder, Inspector Ghote soon makes the acquaintance of the victim's brother, Professor Gregory Strongbow. But the professor is both stubborn and evasive, refusing to tell Ghote what he knows about the events leading up to Hector's death. Soon Ghote finds his own life in danger, as he is faced with a conspiracy that reaches to the very highest levels of Indian politics... This is the third book in the hugely popular 'Inspector Ghote' series from H.R.F. Keating.

What had until recently been a police sergeant is now lying at Ghote’s feet bleeding its last. An accident it may have been, but Ghote saw exactly what happened, and it’s his duty to arrest the killer. Isn’t it? Or can the inspector better serve his beloved police force by disposing of the body - by concealing a crime? And if he does, will he manage to keep his terrible secret?

For London the worst has happened. There have been riots, uncontrolled fires, outbreaks of savage looting, artillery battles, mass flights. The great city lies three parts deserted, open to marauding gangs and beast-wild individuals, its highways and landmarks tumbled like ruined temples. To Mark, comparatively safe in less troubled Highgate, there comes a message that his estranged wife is dying in Wimbledon, right across on the far side of the dangerous bowl of the devastated city.

For a respectable governess like Harriet Unwin, her first few weeks in the shabby, inhospitable home of the Partingtons were as unhappy as any she could remember. The bone-chilling cold, the grim sparseness of the meals, the embittered meanness of old Mr Partington: But for the kindness shown by his son, her spirit must surely have been crushed. But worse was to come for Harriet. Her chance discovery of the old man's cherished secret was, she felt sure, the cause of the attack that finally stilled his heart. The doctor, however, thought otherwise. It was neither illness nor old age that killed poor Mr Partington. It was poison....

When Harriet Unwin takes the position of governess in the well-to-do Thackerton household, it would seem that fortune has smiled on her at last. That is until William Thackerton is found stabbed and Harriet is accused of murder.... In a desperate attempt to prove her innocence, she embarks on a daring scheme to save herself from the gallows. In doing so she uncovers the dark secrets which the family is trying to hide behind a veneer of Victorian respectability.

Es sieht zunächst ganz harmlos aus: Inspector Ghote soll nach Kalkutta reisen, dort einen Meisterverbrecher in Empfang nehmen und ihn nach Bombay eskortieren. Aber weil Ghote die Gelegenheit nutzen und aus der Reise einen Kurzurlaub machen will, nimmt er den Zug. Das hätte er besser nicht getan, denn seine Mitreisenden stellen sich schon bald als äußerst seltsam heraus. Die Reise quer durch Indien wird sehr, sehr aufregend.

Ein filmreif in Szene gesetzter Mord erschüttert die berühmten Bollywood-Filmstudios von Bombay. Für einmal ist der Mord nämlich echt und endet äußerst tödlich. Das prominente Opfer: Indiens gefeierter Leinwandschurke Dhartiraj, ein Superstar. Detective Inspector Ghote sieht endlich seine Chance gekommen, sich als genialer Starermittler in der High-Society einzuführen. Doch hinter den Kulissen dieser eitlen Welt voll Glanz und Glamour lauern tausend Fallstricke auf den arglosen Aspiranten.