Jack Lady Killer

by H.R.F. Keating

The Punjab in India. 1935. The sub-continent under the Raj. Fresh from his English boarding school, Jack Steele is a new recruit to the Indian Imperial Police and soon begins to acquire the attitudes of old India hands towards the people under their rule. Only a few months into his posting, Jack has to conduct a murder investigation when one of the British community at his Station, the sexually rapacious widow Milly Marchbanks, is found strangled. To Jack's consternation, the only clue implicates a member of the Briton's Club. But which one? While Jack goes round and round in circles, his self-effacing Indian sergeant, Bulaki Ram, discreetly nudges him along the way he needs to go.
H. R. F. Keating is best known for his long series of Inspector Ghote mysteries set in India, but Jack, the Lady Killer is something completely different as well as completely unexpected. It is one of the rarest forms known to literature, a detective novel in verse. Inspired by Vikram Seth's brilliantly successful revival of the verse novel in The Golden Gate, Keating develops his rhyme-crime in nearly 300 fourteen-line stanzas. During a writing career spanning forty years, Keating has won many honours, most notably the award of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 1996 for a lifetime's achievement. Since 1985 he has been President of the Detection Club in succession to some of the greats of British crime fiction, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Julian Symons.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating was an English writer of crime fiction most notable for his series of novels featuring Inspector Ghote of the Bombay CID.

H. R. F. KEATING was well versed in the worlds of crime, fiction and nonfiction. He was the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years, as well as serving as the chairman of the Crime Writers Association and the Society of Authors. He won the CWA Gold Dagger Award twice, and in 1996 was awarded the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger for outstanding service to crime fiction.

Series:
. Inspector Ghote
. Harriet Martens

Series contributed to:
. Malice Domestic
. Perfectly Criminal

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am sad I cannot, in good conscience, score this higher. And, to be honest, the third star is for effort.

H.R.F Keating is a successful crime writer who, after reading Vikram Seth’s magnificent The Golden Gate, wholly written in Onegin stanzas, decided to write his next novel in this incredibly restricting verse scheme. You have to admire the guy for trying.

But Pushkin’s sonnet form (fourteen iambic tetrameters with the rhyme scheme "aBaBccDDeFFeGG", where the lowercase letters represent feminine endings - i.e. with an additional unstressed syllable - and the uppercase representing masculine ones) is one of the hardest known to men.
H.R.F. tells us in the introduction that he soon gave up on trying to alternate the feminine and masculine rhymes - that was just too hard. But the meter is often not respected either. And here and there the rhymes are pretty dodgy as well.

But hey, we are dealing with a crime novel here, not with a poetic meditation on life, love and death, as is The Golden Gate. Maybe this slightly clunky vehicle is good enough to carry a story of murder in the tropics? Uh-uh.
Mr Keating did not spend much time on creating a plot. I could tell you the whole story – I won’t – in thirty seconds flat.
The background I can do in five, and will : young man in India learns that the British rulers are awful hypocrites.
An almost non-existent plot and one basic idea make for repetitive storytelling and boring reading.

While The Golden Gate should be enjoyed by anyone with half a brain, a modicum of emotion and an iota of feeling for meter and rhyme, this effort is in no way comparable.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think for many this could be rated higher than 3 stars. I am not a fan of poetry, but my challenge group has a poetry task each April for National Poetry Month, so I thought I would try this novel in verse.

Written by an award winning mystery author, a mystery novel in verse is apparently a rare item. It was cleverly done and kept me reading. The rhymes were better executed than the mystery, which I guessed before I was midway.

I learned something in the prologue. The rhyming pattern in this was the same as that of Eugene Onegin by Pushkin, which I expect to try one day.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

All Keating’s books are grand, and his work as a critic fills me with awe, but this small volume, set in 1930s Punjab, is written in verse.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Detectives in verse, you ask?
Of course and this is new.
He still must find the clue
and then complete his task.

Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy)did the first (as far as we know) novel in verse and H. R. F. Keating was fascinated by it. He is more commonly known as the author of the seemingly unending (and for me that's great!) series concerning Inspector Ghote, mysteries set in India. So this is new.

It's done well, but I just don't like the verse. It was worth a try.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rhyme crime about a 19-year-old who arrives in the Punjab in 1935 with his love of Home, stiff upper lip, and sense of British duty fully present. Will they last?