The Bad Detective

Jack Stallworthy is a bad detective just on the right side of corrupt. But now he's turning criminal...

Detective Sergeant Jack Stallworthy has been accepting backhanders for most of his career. And why not? He's spent thirty years putting villains behind bars, surely he's entitled to a little nest-egg?

Lily, the pretty wife he dearly loves, dreams of retirement on the tropical island Ko Samui, but Jack will happily settle for a bungalow in Devon. Until, that is, influential businessman Emslie Warnaby offers him paradise on a plate. All he has to do is steal one slim file from the Fraud Investigation office at police HQ. But soon Jack Stallworthy is dangerously out of his depth...

H. R. F. Keating was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as ’totally undistinguished’, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern languages. He was also the crime books reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers Association and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award.