Peter (Harmer) Lovesey (born 1936 in Whitton, Middlesex) is a British writer of historical and contemporary crime novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath. Lovesey's novels and stories mainly fall into the category of entertaining puzzlers in the "Golden Age" tradition of mystery writing. He is also well known as a writer of non-fiction histories of track & field athletics and several of his novels have used the sport as a theme. His first-ever book in 1968 was The Kings of Distance, a study of five great runners, Most of Peter Lovesey's writing has been done under his own name. However, he did write three novels under the pen name Peter Lear. Lovesey's novels and short stories have won him a number of awards, including both the Gold and Silver Daggers of the Crime Writers' Association, of which he was chairman in 1991/92. In 2000, he received the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement in crime writing and in 2018 he was made a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. Peter Lovesey lives near Shrewsbury. His son Phil Lovesey also writes crime novels.