Keystone [Paperback]

Peter Lovesey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 1984

Warwick Easton is a cop - a movie cop, that is. When this vaudevillian lands in California, his screen prospects look bleak. But a bathtub meeting with Mack Sennett, lands him a stunts-and-chases job. Danger is to be expected in the work of Keystone Cops - but murder is quite another thing.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pantheon (July 12, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394726049
• ISBN-13: 978-0394726045
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,387,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PETER LOVESEY is the author of the Peter Diamond mysteries, well known for their use of surprise, strong characters and hard-to-crack puzzles. He was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2000, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, the Anthony, the Ellery Queen Readers' Award and is Grand Master of the Swedish Academy of Detection. He has been a full-time author since 1975, and was formerly in further education. Earlier series include the Sergeant Cribb mysteries seen on TV and the Bertie, Prince of Wales novels. The Diamond novels, set in Bath, England, where Peter lived for some years, feature a burly, warm-hearted, but no-nonsense police detective whose personal life becomes as engaging to the reader as the intricate mysteries he solves. His team in Bath CID includes the ex-journo Ingeborg Smith, the long-serving Keith Halliwell and the meticulous John Leaman, all involved in what is essentially a fair-play procedural mystery series. Peter and his wife Jax, who co-scripted the TV series, have a son, Phil, also a teacher and mystery writer, and a daughter Kathy, who was a Vice-President of J.P.Morgan-Chase, and now lives with her family in Greenwich, Ct. Peter currently lives in Chichester, England. His website at www.peterlovesey.com gives fuller details of his life and books. "Try him. You'll love him," wrote the doyen of the mystery world, Otto Penzler, in the New York Sun.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops in a fictional mystery, November 25, 2001

By 

Gary Knoke (Sterling, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Keystone (Paperback)

In a style similar to Stuart Kaminsky, who has also written fictional mysteries with famous Hollywood stars of the past, Englishman Peter Lovesey has written an excellent thriller with silent screen pioneers Mack Sennett, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, and the Keystone Cops that Sennett created and made famous. Lovesey sets up an English actor, who has just transited the States doing Vaudeville, as his hero. The actor, whom Sennett dubs "Keystone" falls in love with a Sennett actress, who is endangered by "real" villains on the set. This period-piece book wonderfully recreates the Hollywood of 1914, and the mystery takes many twists and turns before the hero ultimately prevails. Lovesey once again proves his versatility, and he seems to have had fun writing this book. If you like it, check out other Lovesey works, especially The False Inspector Dew.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In which a Keystone Cop has to solve a real murder mystery, January 9, 2009

By 

Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Keystone (Black Dagger Crime) (Hardcover)

Interesting and unusual crime mystery set in and around the Keystone Film studios in 1915, and featuring a number of the real and larger-than-life historical characters of the silent movie industry at that time.

The story is narrated by the central character, Warwick Easton, who is an itinerant British comedian, slightly stuffy and pompous offstage, quite talented but not hugely successful onstage. Warwick has been working his way around America. His only plans are to earn enough money to pay for his passage home and, if World War One has not finished by that stage, sign up to serve his country.

His vaudeville act having been seen by a scout for the legendary head of Keystone Studios, Mack Sennett, Warwick is persuaded to apply to Keystone for a job. Hearing his name, Warwick Easton as "Keystone" Sennett is amused by the idea of making Warwick a Keystone Cop - not a role which delights him as he would prefer to play character actors, but some artful persuasion by several of the characters at Keystone studios, and his need of money, persuade him to accept.

He has barely joined the studio when one of the Keystone Cops dies during the course of filming a dangerous stunt, in what looks at first like an accident. He makes friends with a beautiful and charming aspiring actress, Amber Honeybee, who has very little talent but has, to most people's astonishment, been made leading lady in one of the films the studio is shooting. And then Amber in turn is suspected of murder after her mother is found dead. Was it another accident - or is the film set becoming the target of a murderer? Before he knows it this Keystone Cop is forced to try to get to the bottom of a real crime.

As always with Peter Lovesey this is a cleverly constructed novel which keeps you guessing and picks up the spirit of the period - in this case the world of movie making at the time of the silent films, which he presents as being at least as mad as anything in the films themselves. The real figures from the age of the silent greats who are captured in amusing and fascinating pen portraits include Mack Sennett, his girlfriend Mabel Normand, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, and his wife Minta.

Entertaining, amusing and clever: I can recommend this book

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Keystone" Lovesey--5 stars for the story, July 7, 2008

By 

Neal J. Pollock (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Keystone (Black Dagger Crime) (Hardcover)

This is my 12th Lovesey book including a fantastic story collection (Butchers & Other Stories of Crime) & books in his 3 series (Bertie the Prince of Wales: Bertie and the Tinman, Sergeant Cribb: The Tick of Death, & Inspector Diamond: The Vault) as well as non-series books (The False Inspector Dew). Lovesey is fond of writing mysteries set in the not-too-distant past. It seems to me that Lovesey puts more humor & sheer delight into his non-series books. This one is a case in point. The story is fairly simple though there are definite elements of mystery. But, having a British vaudeville actor play a Keystone Cop for Mack Sennett certainly provides a setting for comedy! The characters may not be multi-dimensional, or develop much in the story, but it's a really fun story. I think I enjoyed it the most of the 12 books. I'd give it 5 stars. However, my copy of the book (the British version--Redwood Books--a Black Dagger Crime Novel) is very poorly bound--It's pages are like new, but they're falling out -- reminds me of London Bridge falling down.