The Lively Dead - by Peter Dickinson (Paperback)

About the Book

"A sturdy young woman with a knack for home repair and a practical sense of Marxism, Lydia is renovating her London townhouse while her husband finishes law school. To bring in extra money, she rents her upper floors to the exiled government of Livonia, a Baltic state that was long ago absorbed into the Soviet Union. One day, as Lydia is taking up the floorboards, the Livonians carry a coffin through the house. It bears their housekeeper, who is to be honored with vodka toasts and a solemn funeral. After the ceremony, Lydia returns to her floorboards. Beneath the rotted wood is dirt--and in the dirt, she discovers a corpse that never reached the graveyard"--Publisher marketing.

Book Synopsis

In this mystery from CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson, a landlady discovers a corpse beneath her crowded London boardinghouse

A sturdy young woman with a knack for home repair and a practical sense of Marxism, Lydia is renovating her London townhouse while her husband finishes law school. To bring in extra money, she rents her upper floors to the exiled government of Livonia, a Baltic state that was long ago absorbed into the Soviet Union.

One day, as Lydia is taking up the floorboards, the Livonians carry a coffin through the house. It bears their housekeeper, who is to be honored with vodka toasts and a solemn funeral. After the ceremony, Lydia returns to her floorboards. Beneath the rotted wood is dirt--and in the dirt, she discovers a corpse that never reached the graveyard.

Identifying the body and finding the person who stashed it there draws Lydia into a tangle of spies and counterspies as her quiet little boardinghouse becomes a new front in the global Cold War.

Review Quotes

"There are few more ingenious writers of crime fiction than Peter Dickinson." --London Evening Standard

"Peter Dickinson is a national treasure." --The Independent

"The works of British Mystery Writer Peter Dickinson are like caviar--an acquired taste that can easily lead to addiction." --Time

"International intrigue . . . A suspenseful novel and more." --The New York Times

"First-rate Dickinson--it offers that rarest treat of all: a heroine of flesh and blood and brain enough to cope with life as well as crises." --Judith Crist

"Gratifyingly brilliant . . . beautifully knotted together . . . consistently fascinating." --Library Journal

"A genuine original." --The Village Voice

About the Author

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.