PETER LOVESEY  |
||
| DS PETER DIAMOND SERIES / DCI HEN MALLIN SERIES | ||
| YEAR |
TITLE |
|
| 1991 |
 |
THE LAST DETECTIVE: Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: 'not some lad out of police school with a degree in computer studies' but a genuine gumshoe, given to doorstopping and deduction. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no-one willing to identify her, no marks and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit. Struggling with a jigsaw of truant choirboys, teddy bears, a black Mercedes and Jane Austen memorabilia, Diamond persists even when 'the men in white coats' decide they have enough evidence to make a conviction. It's just as well: for despite disastrous personal consequences, and by following the real clues hidden amongst Bath's historic buildings and intertwined with its literary past, the last detective exposes the uncomfortable truth. O-R06/13 |
| 1992 |
 |
DIAMOND SOLITAIRE: A Japanese child is found in Harrods where Diamond is working as a security guard. Her identity is a mystery, but after a television appeal is broadcast she is kidnapped. By interpreting the pictorial clues the autistic child left behind, Diamond tracks her to New York, where a murder is discovered, then to Tokyo where Japan's most famous sumo wrestler helps bring the quest to a sensational climax. O-R06/13 |
| 1995 |
 |
THE SUMMONS: Overweight, unemployed Peter Diamond is summoned from his London flat and driven by two policemen to Bath where he had once headed the murder squad. Convicted serial killer John Mountjoy has escaped from prison and kidnapped the Assistant Chief Constable's daughter. Mountjoy maintains his innocence in the most recent murder and vows to kill his hostage if the real killer isn't found, and he will deal only with Diamond. The wily ex-detective must decide whether to get involved in an investigation nobody wants - except the escapee. It is a challenge that makes huge demands on Diamond: on his ego, his courage in dealing with the violent man he sent down, and, working with the senior policemen he despises, on his patience. The outcome is a triumph of deduction, as satisfying as it is surprising. R07/13 |
| 1995 |
 |
AWAYZGOOSE (37pp): Detective
Superintendent Peter Diamond investigates
when a woman walks into Bath police
station and confesses to murdering her
husband with a teapot. R08/13
Note: Originally published in A Dead Giveway 1995. Re-published in 1998 as one of the DO NOT EXCEED THE STATED DOSE collection. |
| 1996 |
 |
BLOODHOUNDS: Darling, if ever I’ve met a group of potential murderers anywhere, it’s the Bloodhounds.” Thus says the chic, amoral Jessica Shaw of the Bloodhounds of Bath, a society that meets in a crypt to discuss crime novels. But to Shirley-Ann Miller, their latest recruit, they are a gaggle of dotty misfits, until one of them reveals that he is in possession of an immensely valuable stamp, recently stolen from the Postal Museum. Then theft is overtaken by murder when the corpse of one of the Bloodhounds is found in a locked houseboat, with the only key in the possession of a man with a perfect alibi. Burly Peter Diamond finds himself embroiled in a mystery that in more than one sense evokes the classic crime puzzles of John Dickson Carr. O-R07/13 |
| 1997 |
 |
UPON A DARK NIGHT: Who
is the young woman, and why was she dumped
unconscious in a hospital car park upon a dark
night? She is unable to recall anything, even her
name. Then Ada Shaftsbury, a big, boisterous
shoplifter she meets in a hostel for the homeless,
takes up her cause and gives her the temporary
name of Rose. Peter Diamond, the top detective in
Bath, is investigating a suspicious death and is
unwilling to get involved. Upon another dark
night, a woman plunged from the roof of the Royal
Crescent. Accident, suicide, or murder? A party in
the house below had been gatecrashed by half the
young people of Bath. Badgered by Ada, galvanised
by another gruesome death, Diamond is forced to
admit that Rose is the key to the mystery - but
she is no longer there. His own dark night is just
beginning. O-R08/13 |
| 1999 |
 |
THE VAULT: A severed hand arrives on the desk of DS Peter Diamond, Bath's top detective. He is unexcited. These are old bones from a vault below the Abbey Churchyard. But a monstrous mystery with antique connections is beginning. The vault was once part of the house where Frankenstein was written. And the hand is not mediaeval as everyone assumed. It dates from the 1980s, when the underground extension to the Roman Baths was constructed. The police inquiry is complicated by a visiting American professor, Joe Dougan, obsessed by Frankenstein and Mary Shelley. When the professor's wife goes missing, Diamond cannot ignore him. Then the body of a woman bludgeoned to death washes up in the Avon. The double investigation brings Diamond a series of challenges. What are Noble & Nude... The Brains Surgery...Little Terrors...Motorhead? The trail leads to a field in Wilshire where a police colleague is brutally attacked. All this and the actions of the new female Assistant Chief Constable combine to make this Peter Diamond's most daunting case and Peter Lovesey's most engaging mystery. R08/13 |
| 2002 |
 |
DIAMOND
DUST:
A detective learns to suppress his
feelings when a verdict is announced. Peter
Diamond, the head of Bath’s murder team,
reveals no joy when the gang leader Jake
Carpenter is sentenced to life imprisonment
for murder. But the next day a woman is shot
dead in Royal Victoria Park and Diamond’s
self-control dissolves in an instant.
Diamond is then told that the case he is
desperate to solve is one he won’t be allowed to
work on and not only that, but he faces the
ignominy of being treated as a suspect. While
the police put their efforts into checking him
out, Diamond starts his own unauthorised
investigation. Might someone be getting back at
him? Starting with Jake Carpenter, he begins
examining recent cases to see who might have
exacted this cruel revenge. Soon he is sifting
the dust of his entire career. R08/13
|
| 2003 |
 |
THE
HOUSE SITTER: The
identification of the woman found murdered on
Whiteview Sands poses more questions than it
answers. Emma Tysoe was a respected psychologist
and an official criminal profiler with several
successful cases to her credit. Bath Detective
Peter Diamond discovers that she had been
secretly commissioned to work on the profile of
a celebrity-killer but cannot persuade his
colleagues to agree that this is linked to
Emma's death. And even he struggles to make all
the pieces fit together in this perplexing case.
This features the first appearance of DI
Henrietta "Hen" Mallin who investigates the case
alongside DCI Peter Diamond. O-R09/13
|
| 2005 |
 |
THE CIRCLE (Hen Mallin): When Parcel Force driver Bob Naylor plucks up courage to join his local writers’ circle in Chichester he is nervous. He’s not much of a reader, let alone a writer. He expects to meet people unlike himself with names like Maurice, Amelia, Zach and Thomasine - and he finds them. But while he is prepared for some naked ambition, he doesn’t know it will include murder. The death in a house fire of publisher Edgar Blacker propels Bob straight into a murder mystery. For Blacker had only recently addressed the circle. Most of its members had shown him their work and he’d actually promised to publish Maurice’s book about unsolved murders. And then, for some reason, he pulled out of the deal. Being catapulted into the middle of a detective story excites and inspires some of the circle. Bob is pressed into helping Thomasine’s unofficial investigation. Naomi and Zach go one step further - they start writing an online, blow-by-blow account of the case. Soon they are relaying news of an attempted murder and the death of another of the circle. For the real-life detective Henrietta Mallin, these amateur sleuths muddy the waters. Especially as one thinks he’s a genius, one may well be a genius, and one has more in common with Lady Macbeth than Jane Austen. But Hen won’t take nonsense from any of them as she unravels the sinister secret of the circle. R10/13 |
| 2007 |
 |
THE
SECRET HANGMAN: Peter
Diamond, the Bath detective, is having woman
trouble. His boss wants him to find a missing
person, the daughter of one of her friends in
the choir. He is not enthusiastic. Another
woman, who calls herself his Secret Admirer,
wants to set up a meeting in a local pub. He
tries ignoring her. Then there is sexy Ingeborg
Smith, the ex-journo detective constable,
distracting the murder squad from their duties.
No one ignores Ingeborg. Murder becomes a
possibility when a woman's body is found hanging
from a playground swing in Sydney Gardens and a
suspicious second ligature mark is found around
her neck. Diamond investigates the victim's
colourful past. More hangings are discovered and
soon he is certain that a secret hangman is at
work in the city. R09/13
|
| 2008 |
 |
THE HEADHUNTERS
(Hen Mallin): Over coffee, Gemma says
she could murder her boss, and her friend Jo
goes along with the joke, helping her dream
up fantastic ways of doing it. The game is
so amusing that they tell their friends Jake
and Rick, and soon the quartet are calling
themselves 'The Headhunters'. But some of
Rick's suggestions sound uncomfortably
serious. One Sunday morning Jo is horrified
to find a murdered body on the beach at
Selsey. It takes DCI Mallin and her team
some time to discover who the victim is and
by then Gemma and Jo have found another
body. Worse still, Gemma's boss is missing. R10/13 |
| 2009 |
 |
SKELETON
HILL: Battle and burial are built
into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no
great shock when part of a skeleton is
unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's
Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse
found close to the folly known as Beckford's
Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of
the most puzzling cases he has investigated,
involving golf, horseracing, Civil War
re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet.
Inevitably, Diamond butts heads with the group
of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown
Society, discovering in the process that his
boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to
sideline Diamond by sending him to Bristol and
handing the skeleton investigation to his
deputy, Keith Halliwell. Fortunately matters
don't pan out as Georgina plans. R10/13 |
| 2011 |
 |
STAGESTRUCK: Clarion
Calhoun is a fading pop star wanting to
launch an acting career. The audience at her
debut on stage at Bath's Theatre Royal are
expecting a dramatic evening - but what they
get is beyond their wildest imagination.
When Clarion is rushed to hospital with
third degree burns, rumours spread through
the theatrical community and beyond. In the
best theatrical tradition, the show goes on,
but the agony turns to murder. The case
falls to Peter Diamond, Bath's top detective
- but for reasons he can't understand, he
suffers a physical reaction amounting to
phobia each time he goes near the theatre.
As he tries to find its root in his past,
the tension at the Theatre Royal mounts,
legends come to life and the killer strikes
again. O-R11/13
|
| 2012 |
 |
COP TO CORPSE: Hero
to zero. Cop to corpse. One minute PC Harry
Tasker is strolling up Walcot Street, Bath, on
foot patrol. The next he is shot through the
head. No scream, no struggle, no last words.
He is picked off, felled, dead. It's the third
killing of an officer in Somerset in a matter
of weeks. The emergency services are summoned.
Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the
duty inspector seals the crime scene, which is
confined by the river on one side and a
massive retaining wall on the other. He
discovers the murder weapon in a garden - and
is himself attacked and left for dead. Enter
Peter Diamond, Bath's CID chief. Throwing
himself and his team into the most dangerous
assignment of his career, he must outwit an
adversary the likes of which the West Country
has never seen - a twisted killer with a lust
for police blood. R11/13 |
| 2013 |
 |
THE TOOTH TATTOO: Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favourite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman's identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth. For Diamond, who wouldn't know a Stradivarius from a French horn, the investigation is his most demanding ever. Three mysterious deaths need to be probed while his own personal life is in free fall. R11/13 |
| 2014 |
 |
THE
STONE WIFE: Just
as
the bidding gets exciting in a Bath auction
house, three armed men stage a hold-up and
attempt to steal Lot 129, a medieval carving
of the Wife of Bath. The highest bidder,
appalled to have the prize snatched away,
tries to stop them and is shot dead. Peter
Diamond, head of the murder squad, soon
finds himself sharing an office with the
stone wife - until he is ejected. To his
extreme annoyance the lump of stone appears
to exert a malign influence over him and his
investigation. Refusing to be beaten, he
rallies his team and begins finding suspects
and motives. The case demands that someone
goes undercover. The dangerous mission falls
to Sergeant Ingeborg Smith, reverting to her
journalist persona to get the confidence of
a wealthy local criminal through his pop
star girlfriend. And soon, murder makes a
reappearance. R06/14
|
| 2015 |
 |
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN:
A nightmare discovery in the boot of a stolen
BMW plunges car thief Danny Stapleton into the
worst trouble of his life. What links his
misfortune to the mysterious disappearance of an
art teacher at a private school for girls in
Chichester? Orders from above push Peter Diamond
of Bath CID into investigating a police
corruption case in the Chichester force, and he
soon finds himself reluctantly dealing with
spirited schoolgirls, eccentric artists and his
formidable old colleague, Hen Mallin. R07/15 |
| 2016 |
 |
ANOTHER ONE GOES TONIGHT:
Peter Diamond, the
Bath detective brilliant at rooting out murder,
is peeved at being diverted to Professional
Standards to enquire into a police car accident.
Arriving late at the scene, he discovers an
extra victim thrown onto an embankment -
unconscious and unnoticed. Diamond administers
CPR, but no one can say whether the elderly
tricyclist will pull through. But why had the
man been out in the middle of the night with an
urn containing human ashes? Diamond 's
suspicions grow after he identifies the accident
victim as Ivor Pellegrini, a well-known local
eccentric and railway enthusiast. A search of
Pellegrini's workshop proves beyond question
that he is involved in a series of
uninvestigated deaths. While Pellegrini lingers
on life support, Diamond wrestles with the
appalling possibility that he has saved the life
of a serial killer. O-R07/16 |
| 2017 |  |
BEAU DEATH:
A wrecking ball crashes through the roof
of a terraced cottage in Bath and exposes a
skeleton in eighteenth-century clothes. Can
these possibly be the remains of Beau Nash,
the so-called King of Bath, whose body is said
to have ended up in a pauper's grave? Peter Diamond, the
city's most experienced detective, is ordered
to investigate, but grappling with historical
events causes ructions in his team until
everyone is diverted by a modern killing
during a fireworks display on the Royal
Crescent lawn. But Beau Nash refuses to be ignored -
and when astonishing new facts emerge about
the case, Bath's history is rewritten and
mysteries ancient and modern are fused in a
devastating climax. O-R01/18
|
| 2019 |  |
KILLING WITH
CONFETTI: As a New Year
begins in Bath, Ben Brace proposes to his
long-term girlfriend, Caroline. The problem is
that she's the daughter of notorious crime
baron, Joe Irving, who is coming to the end of
a prison sentence. And Ben's father George is
Bath's Deputy Chief Constable. But mothers and
sons are a formidable force: a wedding in the
Abbey and reception in the Roman Baths are set
in place before the career-obsessed DCC can
step in. Peter Diamond, Bath's head of CID, is
appalled to be put in charge of security on
the day. Ordered to be discreet, he packs a
gun and a guest list in his best suit and must
somehow cope with potential killers, gang
rivals, warring parents, bossy photographers
and straying bridesmaids. The laid-back Joe
Irving seems oblivious to the danger he is in
from rival gang-leaders, while Brace can't
wait for the day to end. Will the
photo-session be a literal shoot? Will Joe
Irving's speech as father of the bride be his
last words? Can Diamond pull off a miracle,
avert a tragedy and send the happy couple on
their honeymoon? O-R08/19
|
| 2020 |
 |
THE FINISHER: A killer strikes in the Bath half-marathon. No one in the local CID understands at first why Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is so agitated when he sees Tony Pinto paying unwanted attention to a young woman soon after the start. But Diamond remembers putting Pinto away for a vicious attack on a student, and now the man is on parole after years of good behaviour. Diamond’s fixation with this ex-convict will bring him into trouble from every side, including his boss Georgina and police headquarters.Unknown to anyone at this stage, a murderer known as The Finisher has already been active in the city. Will the next victim be Maeve, who is running to salve her conscience after accidentally destroying a valuable item intended for charity? Olga, a rich Russian determined to shed weight and streamline her figure? Belinda, a painfully shy IT expert taking part in memory of her mother? Or Spiro, an Albanian fugitive on the run from modern slavery? First, Diamond must prove that murder has been done and then discover where the corpse is hidden, a dangerous quest that leaves him with a crippling injury. Only he can unmask The Finisher. O-R11/22 |
| 2021 |
 |
DIAMOND & THE EYE: Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a twenty-first-century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving 'Pete' in his investigation. When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched. Diamond is forced to house his team in the dilapidated Corn Market building across the street. His problems grow when his boss appoints Lady Bede, from the Police Ethics Committee, as an observer. Worse still, Johnny conducts his own inquiry by latching onto Ruby's stylish friend, a journalist called Olympia. Shootings from a drive-by gunman at key players create mayhem and the pressure is really on. Can the team stop more killings in this normally peaceful city? What happened to Ruby's father? And will Johnny crack the case before Diamond does? O-R11/22 |
| 2022 |
 |
SHOWSTOPPER:
Bath's top detective, Peter Diamond, doesn't
believe in jinxes. So when he's asked to
investigate a top TV show plagued by a series of
misfortunes, Diamond is unmoved. He's no fan of
the show - which glorifies criminals and mocks
the police - and the incidents were spread
across six years. It's clear this is the press
making a sensation out of nothing. So Diamond
puts the junior member of his squad on the case.
But when young officer Paul Gilbert goes on
location with the TV unit and witnesses another
near-death incident, Diamond is forced to take
an interest. To make matters worse, the press
get wind of his involvement and Diamond his
under pressure from all quarters. But his
troubles have scarcely started. Devastating
traps and surprises make this the most baffling
case of his entire career. R10/23 |
| Home Page
Authors Menu Email-me@chaseside.org.uk |
||