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| Peter Lovesey in the 1970s, when he began publishing crime fiction |
This is a hard piece for me to write, not because I think Peter Lovesey isn't manifestly deserving of tribute, but because a part of me doesn't want to acknowledge that Peter, a truly wonderful man, isn't with us in this world anymore.
Peter Lovesey died on April 10 at the age of 88 from pancreatic cancer, having published what he announced would be his final Peter Diamond detective novel in November of last year. He promised to keep writing short stories and he did finish several of them I believe.
I hadn't personally exchanged emails with Peter in several years and I did wonder if there were health issues involved or whether he had just decided to retire to a great extent as he neared the age of ninety. PD James published her final Adam Dalgliesh novel at age 88, but ended up following it up with her Jane Austen murder pastiche Death Comes to Pemberley three years later at age 91 (reviewed here recently), and she lived to the age of 94.
I had noticed, however, that Peter didn't seem to be posting on Facebook for several months last year in the spring and summer, but then around the fall he was at it again like usual. Four months ago he even gave one of wonderful interviews with The Poisoned Pen Bookstore. He looked older and frailer but he still had his wonderful plummy voice and he made incisive, sparkling conversation.
I had posted a piece on his final short story collection, the wittily-titled Reader, I Buried Them (2022) on June 6, 2024. Lo and behold Peter commented on the piece (the only person to do so) four months later on October 5. It was typical Peter, kind and generous:
Thanks, Curtis, I came late to this. I'm in awe of all the excellent research that went into it and I thank you for your warm remarks.
This was the last time we ever "spoke," though he liked one of my FB posts just six weeks before he died. (I had posted pics of our local old used bookstore which had some Loveseys on the shelves and linked his name). I feel like I should have done more, but there are always tasks to do and since my Dad's death in late 23 I've found it harder to keep up the blog along with all the other things I try to do in mystery publishing. At least I did get this one post down and Peter saw it. Over the years I reviewed Waxwork and Swing, Swing Together and The False Inspector Dew, I know. (Peter also commented on SST piece.) I actually read a couple of his other books of short stories and and his first two Bertie novels (reread in one case) and I wish I had done some more blog pieces. I meant to....
I felt like there might be something wrong, but I didn't know what exactly and no one told me. I lost Peter's email address in my move, but I could have tracked it down again. I always hated to presume on him, which is silly, because he really was about the kindest and most generous man in the world. There are plenty of prominent people all full of themselves who will never miss a chance to talk down to you if they can, but Peter was not that sort of person at all.
It was Doug Greene (another kind man) who introduced me to Peter when Peter was preparing one of his famous talks, this time on the history of Detection Club. (This was before Martin's book.) At that time, around 2010 or 11 I suppose, I had published the most substantive thing ever written on the DC in the late fanzine CADS. (It was later revised for Crimereads.) Peter repeatedly told me how impressed he was with the piece and all the original research I had put into it. He mentioned it again 2018, where he happened to be the featured speaker at the Edgar Awards in New York, where I had been nominated for the mystery criticism Edgar.
It was so exciting to meet Peter there. I introduced myself and we had a great little talk, until I got more or less shooed off by the woman who was going to introduce him because my questions to Peter were starting to poach on her introductory comments territory. I didn't talk to him again at the Edgars and the last time I saw him there he was sitting with Otto Penzler, who at the time had no idea who I was and certainly no interest in finding out. (Below: Peter charms the 2018 Edgars.)
But after the Edgars I did a nice piece on his Cribb novel Swing, Swing Together, about which Peter commented. He obviously was pleased with it and impressed with the thought that went into it, which certainly bolstered my morale as a researcher and writer of these pieces. We occasionally mutually Facebook posted and he commiserated when my father died. He didn't have to do that, he was just a very kind man, one of the last, it sometimes feels, of the real English gentlemen.
Now he's gone, and with him it feels like the Silver Age of Detective Fiction is now officially over. For me personally the big early milestones in this century, in rapid succession, were the deaths of Reginald Hill and HRF Keating and Margaret Yorke (2012), Robert Barnard (2013), PD James (2014) and Ruth Rendell (2015). Then Catherine Aird died late last year and now Peter Lovesey. These were all people whom I began reading regularly in the 1990s.
Peter, Hill and Barnard were the youngest of the group, all having been born in 1936 (what a year), but for all of them the Second World War was vividly impressed in their minds. Sadly I never got to communicate with the others, excepting a brief exchange with Harry Keating (I'll always remember he said I needed a more vivid title for my book Masters of the Humdrum Mystery, like Hurrah for the Humdrums!); so Peter will always be special in my mind.
Happily we have Simon Brett, who published his first mystery a half-century ago, still with us, and he's even under eighty still. But Brett is really more of a boomer; unlike the others he has no memory of the war--he was born shortly after it ended--or of life before it. Peter was more of my parents' generation; he was about six years younger than my Dad and five years younger than my Mom, who also died from cancer at 88 while in terrific possession of all of her faculties still.
I was always a bit shy and intimidated around Peter, even though he could not have been more easeful. I didn't even ask him to take a pic with me back in 2018. I was always very conscious of his significance in the field: he was one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Detective Fiction. (By my estimation, around 1945 to the 1980s.) Peter was first published at the comparatively young age of 33 in 1970, back when Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner were still alive and writing, with the much-praised Wobble to Death, one of the best of the Victorian period mysteries, which were then not nearly as common as they would become. You could say, alliteratively, that Peter was a pioneer of the period mystery. His Sergeant Cribb series ran for eight books over the Seventies, ending with Waxwork (1978). Cribb appeared over the years in some short stories too.
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| Peter in the 2010s |
During the Eighties he dabbled in non-series mysteries, including another much-celebrated title, The False Inspector Dew (1982), as well as Keystone (1983), Rough Cider (1986), Bertie and the Tinman (1987) and On the Edge (1989). In the 1990s his single Bertie mystery became the first in a droll trilogy consisting of it, Bertie and the Seven Bodies (1990) and Bertie and the Crime of Passion (1993), but Bertie (none other than Albert, Prince of Wales) soon became overshadowed by Peter's police procedural-ish Peter Diamond series, which ran over three decades, from 1991 to 2024, encompassing twenty-two novels. At 55 Peter had reinvented himself as a modern English proceduralist, one of the best.
Peter also was one of his generation's greatest masters of the short form, writing over 100 short stories, most of which were published in five collections between 1995 and 2008.
Peter always respected the puzzle in his mysteries and he greatly admired the Golden Age generation of crime writers. One of the favorites in the Peter Diamond series is Bloodhounds (1996), a locked room mystery which Peter was inspired to write after reading Doug Greene's biography of Golden Age locked room master John Dickson Carr. Peter really linked the past which he partially personally recalled with the present.
Peter's death will always be linked in my own mind with the deaths of my own parents. A fine generation is passing from the scene, leaving us in what feels a much more tawdry and degraded age in all manner of ways. Peter Lovesey was one of our last true gentlemen. I am so sorry he is gone, but I am glad I got to know him.
