One Foot in the Grave

CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson is back: Now-retired Scotland Yard superintendent James Pibble isn’t about to go quietly into the night—not when there’s a murder case or two (or three) to solve

At Flycatchers, a well-to-do nursing home watched over by no-nonsense nurse Jenny, one-time detective James Pibble shuttles between his nothing-to-live-for present and memories of the crimes he’s solved—or failed to. He’s roused from his listless existence when he discovers a dead body on top of the water tower.

Security guard George Tosca isn’t the only one at Flycatchers who has met his maker a bit too abruptly. There have been other suspicious deaths in the last three years, including those of military man Sir Archibald Gunter and Bertie Foster-Banks, an inveterate gambler and shareholder in the home. The arrival of a woman in black sets off a sinister chain of events, and before he knows it, Pibble is on the case.

As he travels down a twisting path of blackmail and escalating violence, Pibble finds that his life is suddenly filled with purpose again. He will bring a cunning killer to justice—or die trying. But the real reason he went up to the tower on that stormy winter night is linked to a secret he’ll carry to his grave.

One Foot in the Grave is the 6th book in the James Pibble Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Peter Dickinson was born in Africa but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of Punch, and since then earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for children and adults. His books have been published in several languages throughout the world.
 
The author of twenty-one crime and mystery novels for adults, Dickinson was the first to win the Gold Dagger Award of the Crime Writers’ Association for two books running: The Glass-Sided Ants Nest (1968) and The Old English Peepshow (1969). Dickinson was shortlisted nine times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice.
 
Dickinson served as chairman of the Society of Authors and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for services to literature. Peter Dickinson died on December 16, 2015, at the age of eighty-eight.