Tim Heald

> To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Agatha Christie, still by common consent the doyenne of English Detective Fiction, a team of her most distinguished descendants have joined in a highly original tribute. Leading members of the British Crime Writers Association have responded with ingenuity and enthusiasm to the challenge of producing stories set in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction - between the world wars-and containing the essential ingredients of A CLASSIC ENGLISH CRIME. >In a detective story, murder is no respecter of persons or places; here the vicarage lawn is no safer than the rusting funicular overhanging the Bay of Naples. The locations range from country house to seaside hotel, from village fête to West End theatre - while the crimes themselves, no less varied, are as bizarre and cunning as anything Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple had to deal with: a hostess poisoned at her own sumptuous dinner table; the baffling disappearance of a golfing baronet at the 15th green; the corpse of a cabaret singer found in a trunk at a station on the Brighton line....

Seventeen Detection Club colleagues join together to create a surprise 80th birthday tribute to H.R.F. Keating that may be the most unusual festschrift ever assembled. Practically every contributor has chosen to memorialize a particular aspect of Inspector Ghote’s creator. Lionel Davidson focuses on his birthday celebration, Tim Heald his beard, Liza Cody his fascination with Hindu mythology, Catherine Aird a second-hand encounter with Keating in the south of France, editor Lovesey his hobby of “popping round to the post,” Len Deighton (in his first short story in 30 years) his passion for Sherlock Holmes. Robert Barnard takes off from Keating’s dislike of airports; Jonathan Gash sets a romantic triangle on a ship out of Bombay; June Thomson inscribes a dying message inspired by Keating; P.D. James traces the impact of a Ghote novel on a murder at school; and James Melville recalls Keating’s charlady/sleuth Emma Craggs. Thinly disguised versions of Keating are suspects in the stories of Reginald Hill, Colin Dexter and Michael Z. Lewin. In honor of Keating’s verse novel Jack the Lady Killer, Simon Brett supplies a short story in verse. Andrew Taylor and Michael Hartland venture further afield before Sheila Keating concludes the volume with a reprint of her husband’s “Arkady Nikolaivich.” --Kirkus review

Christmas mystery short stories.