The Football Season, Sgt. Cribb. and forgotten bookshops.

So the Football season is well and truly under way once more. Like most of the popular sports of to-day Football has its roots in the Victorian era. That fact always reminds me of the wonderful "Sergeant Cribb" series of books written by Peter Lovesey.

Despite their very British background I first encountered these novels in American paperback editions with wonderfully evocative covers. I remember buying a copy of "The Detective wore silk drawers" and being instantly hooked by a fast-paced, humorous mystery story with a background of bare-knuckle boxing. This led me on to find "Wobble to death" which was Peter Lovesey's first novel and winner of the Macmillan / Panther prize. It was set against the background of an endurance race. The Victorian era was the fountainhead of all the great popular sports of the present day.

There used to be a wonderful, little used bookshop near the University, just off Hawkhill, in Dundee. It was owned by a Mr. Marshall and stocked an amazing amount of popular fiction. (I'll hold up my hand and admit that I spent too much time and money there. Ditto the late, lamented pub "The Scout" which stood only a few yards distant). I had always read Science Fiction but Marshall's opened my eyes to other genres.

I discovered that Westerns could be well written and imaginative. Early encounters with Louis L'Amour led me on to read John (B)Harvey ("Hart the Regulator"), Elmore Leonard, Ed Gorman and Loren D. Estleman. Just what is it with crime writers and the Western ?

I never really took to the work of J.T. Edson. The multiple series he wrote seemed to reflect the B westerns that were tacked on in cinemas as second features during the '50s and '60s. The Western authors whose works I most enjoyed all had a "big screen" quality either in setting or characters. Edson did however coin a memorable phrase when describing the "revisionist" Westerns that had surplanted those of the Golden Age. Many of the films being produced in the late '60s and early '70s were downright sleazy, particularly the stampede of low budget "spaghetti westerns" that drygulched Sergio Leone's superior product (and were resurrected by the '80s video boom). Edson dismissed this genre of film-making as"mud and rags ". Few film critics were as succinct, or as accurate.

The "Sergeant Cribb" books made me a faithful follower of Peter Lovesey's work. Can it really be nearly forty years? The author remains up there in my top 10 after all this time. I even had the pleasure of meeting him at a crime fiction "convention" in Nottingham and I can report that he absolutely lived up to my expectations. The "Peter Diamond" books get better with each new novel and the author's short story collections are full of little gems to be savoured. I recommend them, but savour them one at a time. As the title of one collection says, "Do not exceed the stated dose".