The Lizard in the Cup

Kirkus Reviews The connoisseur touches which have distinguished all of Mr. Dickinson's curious and curiouser stories are fully in evidence here on an island in Greece where James Pibble has been asked to come and protect the very rich and powerful Thanassi Thanatos. His attention and yours will turn from modern art to a monastery with two old whiskey priests or rather ouzo monks and the pharmacological particulars of processing opium into morphine. This is not, of course, for your eat-and-run habitue but for those who will enjoy all these divers and startling special effects.

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.