STARTING HIS WRITING CAREER as a journalist, Henry Reymond Fitzwalter Keating (1926–2011), known to all as “Harry,” worked for several newspapers until 1960, when he became a full-time author, producing several general novels and mysteries, achieving success with The Perfect Murder (1964). Introducing his most famous character, Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay CID, it won the (British) Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Gold Dagger for the best novel of the year; it also was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Ghote (pronounced GO-tay), one of the most revered characters in British crime fiction for more than four decades, is the homicide expert in Bombay but is nonetheless a man beset by doubts. He is dominated by his wife and gives the impression while on the job of being bullied or victimized by his superiors, tough criminals, and powerful witnesses or suspects. Nevertheless, in spite of his simple naïveté, he is often shrewd and seems always to come through with the correct solution to any mystery with which he is confronted. Although praised for his accurate and sensitive portrayal of life in India in the Ghote novels, Keating did not visit India until he had written nine books set there.
Keating was born in Sussex and, after joining the BBC Engineering Department as a youth-in-training, served in the army from 1945 to 1948. He attended Trinity College in Dublin, then returned to England to work at various newspapers. As a freelance writer, he reviewed for the Times (London) for fifteen years, beginning in 1967. Regarded as one of the great writers of fair-play detective fiction, Keating served as president of the prestigious Detection Club (1985–2000) and was awarded a Cartier Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement by the CWA in 1996.
“The Locked Bathroom” was first published in the June 2, 1980, issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.