Thursday, December 17, 2015

Closing the Book on Dickinson

Africa-born British author and poet Peter Dickinson certainly tied things up neatly for his obituary writers when he passed away yesterday, December 16--which also happened to be his 88th birthday. He died after what’s being termed “a brief illness.”

Britain’s Telegraph remembers Dickinson as a “prolific children’s author who combined riveting plots with historical and psychological insight.” But he also gained a fine reputation for penning adult mystery novels. As The Bookseller explains, “He was the first author to win the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for two consecutive novels: Skin Deep in 1968 [a novel rechristened in the States as The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest] ... and A Pride of Heroes in 1969 …” Both stories starred Scotland Yard Superintendent James Pibble, who had “a knack for solving the most extraordinary of crimes.” Among Dickinson’s other mysteries, fellow author Martin Edwards writes that “The Yellow Room Conspiracy (1992) is probably my favorite.” Several of Dickinson’s Pibble mysteries are available in e-book format from Open Road Media, which also circulates more of his works.

READ MORE:Peter Dickinson Obituary,” by Julia Eccleshare
(The Guardian).

1 comment:

Keith Raffel said...

Peter Dickinson was one of my all-time faves. I wrote a book-you-have-to-read piece for Rap Sheet about his Death of a Unicorn, which you can find here: http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-you-have-to-read-death-of-unicorn.html