Please leave your comments below, or you can email H.R.F. Keating with your thoughts, questions, or opinions. (Please make sure to change the word AT in the email address to the symbol @ when writing your email. This is a deliberate misspelling in order to prevent spam.)
Also, please make sure to visit the News & Discussion page to discuss Keating’s books with other fans.
30 Comments
Dear Sir/Madam
I am writing to say how sorry I am to hear about the passing of Mr Keating, please could you send my condolences to the family.
Nick
Dear Mr. Keating,
I had seen your famous Crime Fiction ‘The Perfect Murder’ on silver screen a long time ago in 1988 in Delhi . I wish to read your another Gold Dagger winning fiction ‘The Murder of the Maharajah’ but could not get it on the reputed book stores in Calcutta like Oxford. Can you please inform where this book will be available in Calcutta / India.
Regards,
Amit Mitra
Calcutta
Dear Amit Mitra,
I am glad you feel encouraged to find another book of mine to read after The Perfect Murder. I would not think that too many book shops throughout the world are stocking The Murder of the Maharajah after all this time. But of course where one can generally get such titles is on the internet at Amazon – sometimes remarkably cheaply. Hope you have success.
Yours Harry Keating
Dear H. R. F. Keating,
I have heard of the Inspector Ghote books but I not yet read them but I do know that your Ghote books are very excited, tell me did you use research for your Ghote novels or was it your imagination? and also how did it all began with the Ghote novels and your writing career?
thanks
best wishes
Jak Taberner
PS
I am planning to write crime novels one day.
Dear Jak Taberner,
You ask about research and imagination before I started to write about Inspector Ghote and the answer is a mixture of both. I researched extensively for about a year from my London home before starting to write, using books, newspapers, television and films about India. It was not until I had already published several of the novels that I had the opportunity of visiting India and seeing it all first hand.
You ask how it all began. First of all I had always wanted to be a writer and I had always read crime novels. My first four books (with English settings) were published in the UK but not in America so in order to increase my sales I decided to find a subject that would be acceptable to the Americans. I settled on India. The first Ghote title The Perfect Murder did well and achieved an American publisher.
I suggest that if you want to know more about my books and myself you explore my Web page which contains a wide variety of articles.
And I am pleased that Inspector Ghote has inspired you with the notion of writing – the best of luck.
Yours Harry Keating
Dear Mr. Keating,
I sent you an email without realizing that I could have done through the website. So I am insering my email below just so others can see how far flung and widespread your readers are!
Dear Sir,
I just finished reading your book “Dr Ghote draws a line”, a book that my daughter had bought – presumably, a number of years ago, when she was a high school student and was visiting India often. As a recently retired person, I have retreated to my old hobby of reading books and I was fortunate enough to find this one on her shelf.
What a book I found it to be! Having grown up in India, I could much appreciate the fine details you provided on the Indian style of living, especially among the bureaucracy. The brief bio you have on your website does not say anything about your ever having lived in India even for a brief stretch and I am amazed by the authenticity you have been able to provide to Dr. Ghote, Sir. Asif and his companions. The last line of the book is just the best sentence in the book.
Thanks and Regards,
–
Durai Raghavan
Plano, TX, USA
Dear Durai Raghavan,
Your email was the kind that gives any author great pleasure to receive. The book was written 32 years ago and I must admit the detail now escapes me – I think I must re-read it and I can only hope that I find it as enjoyable as you did.
The answer to your question is that no I never lived in India and indeed wrote at least four of the titles before I managed to visit the sub continent. I did of course research widely for about a year before I wrote the first Ghote book, The Perfect Murder. I found that I developed a strong affinity with the country and my wife tells me that our home in London has become a shrine to it. I am delighted that you find the books have the authentic Indian atmosphere.
I find your Dr Johnson quotation intriguing, perhaps I should have used it at the front of the book. I hope you will be able to find some of the other titles listed on my Web site. Most of them are available in America and certainly there are many to be found on the internet.
Thank you for taking the trouble to write
Yours Harry
Hello Mr Keating, It’s been a long time and I do not think you will remember, but as a young reporter I had met you and given you a day’s tour of Bombay (including the Bombay stock exchange) way back in 1983-84. We then had a nice cup of tea and a chat. Meanwhile I am no longer a young reporter (though still a journalist) I am writing to you because I just recently saw The Perfect Murder again and wanted to check out what’s new on the Inspector Ghote front. Your latest (A small case for Inspector Ghote) is not available here in Bombay, (or Mumbai as it is called.) Do your publishers plan to distribute it here? Many thanks and glad to see the good Inspector is still going strong. rgds, Sidharth Bhatia
The 1980s do seem a very long time ago and my 83 year old memory is not as good as it was, but I do remember your name and that you and many others were very kind spending your time helping me to get to know India better. Alas I find that writing in my rather frail state of health seems beyond me so there have been no new titles since A Small Case for Inspector Ghote. I am at a loss as to what happened about that title not being issued in India by my British Publishers but I will have another go at them. I would be delighted if it was to be in print in India.
Thank you for making the enquiry and I hope your journalism is going well.
Yours Harry
In an email received on 20 December 2009, David S. wrote:
Hello Mr. Keating!
I am an American who grew up in India and have worked there for
awhile. Now I work in Malaysia. I really enjoy your novels, esp. your
Ghote ones. I’m glad to see you have picked him up again! I was just
wondering–how do you continue to get new ideas?
Also, I see that your last three novels have remained in Hardback, and
Allison and Busby haven’t put out paperback copies. Is there any
reason for that? Are there any plans in the future for paperbacks? (I
am sorry, but I’m not that rich to be able to afford hardback.)
Are you working on a new book? If so, may I ask (and get some kind of
answer, haha!) what?
Thanks for giving reading pleasure to so many!
your fan,
David Stengele
Dear Mr.Stengele
Thank you indeed for writing. An author (certainly this one) is always gratified to learn that what they have written has affected some unknown reader somewhere. Sadly the answer to your question ‘How do you get new ideas?’ is that in days past I would suddenly find, often in bed where I would scribble a memo to myself, that something just arrived in my head. Alas, now – I am a rather frail 83 – nothing seems to come, perhaps because I know that I am unlikely to be able to write a whole book. But encouragement from such as yourself might work a miracle.
Why no paperbacks? Answer Allison and Busby are apparently too small an outfit to venture on risking them, and, although Penguin will be publishing a range of past titles in 2011 A&B are sitting on the rights of the last three.
May I post your email with my answer as a comment on the Web site?
Yours gratefully Harry
I sent you an email a little bit earlier; I didn’t scroll down to the bottom of the page.
I am an occasional blogger and an avid web-trawler, and came across some blogs/ stories that credit you, among others, with coining the term ‘Bollywood’. Have you had anything to do with it?
I’d have you know that I did contact another of the persons credited with this coinage and she mentioned your name in her response; you can read her entire response in the email that I sent you.
I’d appreciate your response greatly – you can respond here or to my email.
I’d also have you know that I enjoyed your Inspector Ghote books a lot, and now my 11-yr old daughter enjoys them too. I am sure my five-ur old will also grow up to like them.
Dear Alok,
Just to say that I certainly do not think I invented the term Bollywood: I would not have dared. When I came to write Filmi, filmi, Inspector Ghote, the title in the Inspector Ghote series that was published in the UK in 1976, it was after I had been treated most generously by the Indian film industry, touring the studios and meeting the people involved there, but the industry was already saddled with the, opprobrious if you like, but possibly affectionate, name, Bollywood. Possibly emanating from the Bombay,as they were then, gossip journalists. Bavinda Collaco says she invented it in 1976/77 but to fit my writing of the book and its publication date she may have had to coin it before that date. I may have helped to perpetuate the name but I make no claim to its invention.
Reading your extended email may I say that I am delighted that you and your eleven year old daughter like the books – not one of my 9 grandchildren ever read them at that age – and I can only reply that I enjoyed writing about Ghote and India enormously. There are two new titles now in which I take Ghote back to the beginning of his career in the 1960s Inspector Ghote’s First Case Uk and US and A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? UK 2009 both available on Amazon of course.
Yours, Harry
I just finished the brilliant “Doing Wrong.” During the time that I read the book, I Googled pictures of Benares and I was delighted to see that the images of the city were so vividly portrayed in the novel.
Thank you. It is always gratifying that when one has not visited a place it is still possible for research and the imagination to get it right. Are you Tim Cook of the Canadian War Museum and Carleton University? I have visited Canada once but never written about it. — Harry
Many sorries. I’m not the Tim Cook that you refer to. I am but a simple country patent lawyer in rural Texas, USA.
No need for apologies. I think I am more pleased that someone not associated with the literary world enjoys my books because on the whole I feel that I am endeavouring to write for John Doe rather more than for my colleagues. I hope that my newest two titles, in which I take Ghote back to the beginning of his career in the 1960s, Inspector Ghote’s First Case (UK and US) and A Small Case for Inspector Ghote? (UK 20090), have reached you in Texas. But of course that is not necessary because with Amazon anything is available world-wide at the click of a button. — Harry
Just a fan, writing to tell you how very, very much I enjoy your books. Like millions of others, I am ‘hooked’ on Inspector Ghote and felt quite sad when just recently I finished the last in the series.I have also read your Harriet Martens series and am now working my way through all your other novels.Thank you for giving me many,many hours of pleasure,you are so very clever.
All the best to you,
Robyn Norris,The Central Coast of NSW,Australia.
Dear Robyn Norris,
All the way from Australia comes a comment of the sort that can only make a writer say ‘So it’s all been worth-while’. When we set up the Web site I did not expect very much, perhaps a few pointings-out of errors and weaknesses. But to get such glowing comments, not just about one story but on almost all of them. It does an 83-year-old, who fears his time has gone, all the good in the world. Thank you, thank you.
Harry
Dear Harry,
Sorry to reply so late. I’m very pleased to hear that you remember reviewing me with pleasure all those years ago. I wish I had continued to write with the constancy that you have shown all these years. However, I can say that I hope there will be a new Dowling during the next year. The first chapters are already written.
Let me also say that Amazon has delivered to me here in Italy INSPECTOR GHOTE’S FIRST CASE and I’ve started reading it with great pleasure.
All best wishes,
Gregory
Dear Mr Keating,
I’ve just finished reading Writing Crime Fiction – as book as encouraging to the new writer as it is helpful – many thanks! I hope I can live up to the advice it offers.
Cheers,
David
Adelaide
South Australia
Delighted to hear you found the book useful and hope there will be news of a published title before long – let me know. Best wishes, Harry
I sent you an email instead of a Comment (Ihadn’t scrolled far enough down the webpage). Anyway,here goes.
Dear Harry, Our friendship goes back over 50 years to the era of the Bond Minicar (no reverse gear, no driving licence required)and I missed your annual visit this year. Perhaps next year ‘if we’re all spared’ as one’s older relations used to say!
I wish you success with the new book.
Rosalind
Thank you for your good wishes and hope we will meet again before too long. Love Harry
I’ve just read A SMALL CASE FOR INSPECTOR GHOTE? It is a great pleasure to see Ghote return – and to see him in his earliest cases. He is in fine form in this novel. We follow his thought processes so intimately that it seems to me that we get closer to him than in any of the earlier novels. The chapter at the start of the novel where he brings home the victim’s severed head and has to decide where to hide it is a wonderful example: we learn so much about his home-life and his relationship with his family; it succeeds in being full of tension as well as painfully funny. It’s rare to find humour and tension so beautifully combined but it’s often the hallmark of the Ghote novels.
I am looking forward to reading INSPECTOR GHOTE’S FIRST CASE now (I realise I’m doing this in the wrong order).
Dear Gregory,
Comments such as yours make sweet reading especially when they come from someone I vividly remember reviewing with pleasure back in my Times column days. When will there be a new Dowling?
Harry! Congratulations on the re-emergence of Inspector Ghote in the last two years, it is a great delight to read his earlier cases. Not only were you the successor of Dorothy Sayers as President of the Detection Club but you follow her as a writer of LITERARY detective novels– she would have found great pleasure in reading them.
Dear Christopher,
Good to think that you feel the literary tradition is being upheld – perhaps mysteriously Ghote could encounter Lord Peter at some future date.
Hello, Harry and Sheila. I like your website. I’m going to put the address in my monthly newsletter which reaches more than 5,000 mystery readers and (occasional) book buyers.
Yours, Otto
Dear Otto,
It is very cheering that someone so deeply into crime literature approves of the Web page. Also great that so many more potential readers will be kept up to date with the latest titles.