What, of course, adds to his artistic achievement in begetting Ghote was the fact that he had never set foot in India when Ghote, who was based in Bombay (Mumbai), first appeared in The Perfect Murder in 1964. Keating’s only Indian accomplishment in those days was his ability, taught by a cousin when young, to count up to five in Hindustani. It was to be another 10 years and a good few Ghote books later before Keating made his first visit to the India that he had described from his imagination, bolstered by astute reading and research.
For 15 years he was crime fiction critic for The Times, and from 1985 to 2001 was president of the Detection Club, following in the footsteps of figures such as Chesterton, EC Bentley and Agatha Christie.
He edited a number of books on crime fiction, including Whodunit? A Guide to Mystery, Suspense and Crime Fiction (1982), and chose his 100 best crime stories in Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books (1987). The latter has an admiring foreword by the American author Patricia Highsmith, creator of the Ripley novels. Although very different writers and characters, Keating and Highsmith became firm friends after they met through one of his neighbours, who was Highsmith’s editor in Britain.
On one occasion she agreed to read one of Keating books, which he had set in the United States, to check that he had correctly captured the American idiom. She advised him that the term to “knock up” — which Keating used to indicate waking someone in the early hours — had a rather different meaning in America.
Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating, always known as Harry, was born on October 31 1926. His father, who came of Anglo-Irish stock and was a bit of a writer manqué, ran a prep school. Harry was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, but left at 16 as his father was attracted to the “University of Life” theory of higher education and also had no particular desire to pay the bills for a conventional further education.
In wartime England the young Keating became an engineer at the BBC, and on the day that the war ended he was conscripted into the Army. He bashed a lot of parade grounds, peeled a lot of spuds, made a mess of repairing a good few radio sets and failed to gain a commission. With his two-and-a-half year stint with the Colours completed he found that he was entitled to an ex-serviceman’s grant to go up to university.
He went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he read Modern Languages, played a full part in literary life and other intellectual activities of the university and, after four “dizzy” years, came down with a First.
He then entered journalism, first in Swindon, Wiltshire, where he learned the fundamentals of the trade, graduating to The Daily Telegraph in the late Fifties. Keating must have been the only home sub-editor in the history of the Telegraph to be interviewed in French when he applied for the job. The then editor, Sir Colin Coote, fancied himself as a French speaker and could not let the opportunity slip when he learned that Keating had read French at Trinity.
As a home sub-editor with both The Daily and, later (part-time), The Sunday Telegraph, Keating had a reputation as much for his coolness under pressure as for his cutting and copy-tasting skills. He also worked for some years as a sub-editor on The Times, and liked to remind his friends that Graham Greene, one of his heroes, had worked in the same capacity at his, or an adjoining, desk. Throughout his sub-editorial years on national newspapers, Keating wrote little or nothing for them, but in his spare time he was penning his secret words. In fact, he had written from an early age and always nourished the ambition to be an author.
But it was his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, who encouraged him to write a detective story . The pattern of his future life was laid, and eventually the journalism that brought in a regular income could be discarded. He was to become a full-time author with additional and pleasant chores, such as reviewing crime novels for The Times.
Keating’s first detective novel, Death and the Visiting Fireman, was published by Gollancz in 1959. Others followed, but it was not until 1964 that Inspector Ghote (originally he was to be called “Ghosh”) made his first appearance in The Perfect Murder and a new type of detective entered the literary world. The book won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association in Britain and a special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
In all there would be 26 Ghote novels, a Ghote film and Ghote radio plays. Keating intended Ghote’s final appearance to be in the novel Breaking and Entering (2000), but he brought back the character in Inspector Ghote’s First Case (2008) and A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? (2009).
In 1999 Keating published a verse novel, Jack, the Lady Killer, and in 2000 he embarked on a new series of seven crime novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harriet Martens, a policewoman who adopts a tough image to survive in the masculine world of British policing.
There were many other books too, and Keating would also edit various crime-writing selections and anthologies. Another Gold Dagger came with a non-Ghote novel set in India, The Murder of the Maharajah, published in 1980.
In appearance — certainly in his later years, when he sported a large, bushy beard — Keating bore a strong resemblance to Orde Wingate, the Chindit leader. But, unlike Wingate, he was not (on his own admission) built for heroics or histrionic gestures. He was genuinely modest, disliked violence and liked a quiet, ordered life . There was something in his joke about himself in his Who’s Who entry that his recreation was “popping round to the post”.
His reserve could at first be taken for indifference, but this soon dissolved as the warmth of his character came through. There was, however, a small part of his artistic self that he kept private.
Keating received the George N Dove Award in 1995 and the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature in 1996. On his eightieth birthday in 2006 members of the Detection Club honoured him with an anthology, Verdict of Us All. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1990.
HRF Keating married Sheila Mitchell in 1953. They had three sons and a daughter.
In wartime England the young Keating became an engineer at the BBC, and on the day that the war ended he was conscripted into the Army. He bashed a lot of parade grounds, peeled a lot of spuds, made a mess of repairing a good few radio sets and failed to gain a commission. With his two-and-a-half year stint with the Colours completed he found that he was entitled to an ex-serviceman’s grant to go up to university.
He went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he read Modern Languages, played a full part in literary life and other intellectual activities of the university and, after four “dizzy” years, came down with a First.
He then entered journalism, first in Swindon, Wiltshire, where he learned the fundamentals of the trade, graduating to The Daily Telegraph in the late Fifties. Keating must have been the only home sub-editor in the history of the Telegraph to be interviewed in French when he applied for the job. The then editor, Sir Colin Coote, fancied himself as a French speaker and could not let the opportunity slip when he learned that Keating had read French at Trinity.
As a home sub-editor with both The Daily and, later (part-time), The Sunday Telegraph, Keating had a reputation as much for his coolness under pressure as for his cutting and copy-tasting skills. He also worked for some years as a sub-editor on The Times, and liked to remind his friends that Graham Greene, one of his heroes, had worked in the same capacity at his, or an adjoining, desk. Throughout his sub-editorial years on national newspapers, Keating wrote little or nothing for them, but in his spare time he was penning his secret words. In fact, he had written from an early age and always nourished the ambition to be an author.
But it was his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, who encouraged him to write a detective story . The pattern of his future life was laid, and eventually the journalism that brought in a regular income could be discarded. He was to become a full-time author with additional and pleasant chores, such as reviewing crime novels for The Times.
Keating’s first detective novel, Death and the Visiting Fireman, was published by Gollancz in 1959. Others followed, but it was not until 1964 that Inspector Ghote (originally he was to be called “Ghosh”) made his first appearance in The Perfect Murder and a new type of detective entered the literary world. The book won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association in Britain and a special Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
In all there would be 26 Ghote novels, a Ghote film and Ghote radio plays. Keating intended Ghote’s final appearance to be in the novel Breaking and Entering (2000), but he brought back the character in Inspector Ghote’s First Case (2008) and A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? (2009).
In 1999 Keating published a verse novel, Jack, the Lady Killer, and in 2000 he embarked on a new series of seven crime novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Harriet Martens, a policewoman who adopts a tough image to survive in the masculine world of British policing.
There were many other books too, and Keating would also edit various crime-writing selections and anthologies. Another Gold Dagger came with a non-Ghote novel set in India, The Murder of the Maharajah, published in 1980.
In appearance — certainly in his later years, when he sported a large, bushy beard — Keating bore a strong resemblance to Orde Wingate, the Chindit leader. But, unlike Wingate, he was not (on his own admission) built for heroics or histrionic gestures. He was genuinely modest, disliked violence and liked a quiet, ordered life . There was something in his joke about himself in his Who’s Who entry that his recreation was “popping round to the post”.
His reserve could at first be taken for indifference, but this soon dissolved as the warmth of his character came through. There was, however, a small part of his artistic self that he kept private.
Keating received the George N Dove Award in 1995 and the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding services to crime literature in 1996. On his eightieth birthday in 2006 members of the Detection Club honoured him with an anthology, Verdict of Us All. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1990.
HRF Keating married Sheila Mitchell in 1953. They had three sons and a daughter.
