I checked out Lovestruck because I love the audio narrator, Simon Prebble, and was about to go on a long car trip. I bailed after six chapters despite Simon Prebble because of the incredibly annoying character of Sargeant Dawkins. (Note to authors: don't write a character who is so obnoxious and ...
A good chunk of the first part of this book does not include Peter Diamond. Where'd he go? What's happening? As someone who has been reading two or so of these a month in order for the past several months, not having the series character in the book was ... different. At first. But I really grew ...
This one again I dug out from some top crime fiction list I managed to find on the internets, so I ordered the book through ebay for like, a euro (expecting a crime masterpiece and praising my luck for getting a hardcover copy so dirt cheap :)). Well, it was an alright book, although its style wa...
It is always sad when you reach the last book of a favorite author, the last book you had not yet read. Oh, I this isn't it, nor is Lovesey potentially done. But it is the last book I planned to read, barring brand new books. I have just two books left under the Lovesey name I haven't read, both ...
My bookshelf is full of books that I want to read. These may be books that have been recommended or they may be later books in a series that I have started and enjoyed. Yet when I am ready to start a new one, not all will fit the bill. Such was the case here. As I looked down the list of books an...
At first I felt the same as Thackeray: Where's the body? I do remember reading this yonks ago, probably during my first incarnation as library worker in the 70s. Why is Sgt. Cribb investigating music hall mishaps? As usual, when reading in this series, you get the impression you're learning a lot...
A young woman is dumped, injured and unconscious, in a private hospital’s parking lot. She is an amnesiac with no memory prior to her discovery by hospital personnel. Detective Inspector Peter Diamond of the Bath homicide squad is unwilling to become involved. He has other, more important cases t...
This was bizarre. I can't say I'm keen on sporting stories, especially ones about bare-knuckle fighting, and I was constantly worried about poor PC Jago. Sgt. Cribb takes Jowett's admiration of the French method seriously and sends a new, relatively unknown constable under cover as a bare-knuckle...
An elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped. Cribb and Thackerey investigate and uncover strange parallels with the then-popular Jerome K. Jerome mystery Three Men in a Boat.After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Vic...
This is an odd little story published over forty years ago but because the author is one of my favourites, I figured it was worth trying it as one of this series.A typically suppressed obsessive and rather vain little Victorian man, Albert Moscrop is convinced that spending his Brighton holiday "...
Spandau Prison has only one inmate: the most closely guarded prisoner in the world. His name is Rudolf Hess. A Nazi -- and one with a damaging tale to tell. Only Berlin correspondent Red Goodbody -- a newshound with courage and panache -- will be able to get close enough to the prisoner to unrave...
I do love a dark story without a Hays-Code like finish, and thanks to Peter Lovesey (and my husband, who recommended this read) I got to read this one. It's not as darkly comic as some other novels I've read, but it's just subversive enough to scratch that itch and make me think "oh, now *that's*...
A skeletal hand is unearthed in the vault under the Pump Room in Bath, England, near the site where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Then a skull is excavated. The bones came from different corpses, and one is modern. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must solve a series of crimes including ...
The clapping had finished and everyone was moving. ‘Only the interval,’ Ingeborg said. ‘God help us.’ ‘Be thankful for small mercies.’ He stood up to get the feeling back into his legs. The seats weren’t the most comfortable. At the same time he looked across to where Paloma had been. She’d gone....
Ingeborg asked.She was seated with Nathan in the rear of his black limousine, trusted enough to travel without one of the minders beside her. Another car was following with at least four heavies inside.“Leave it to me,” Nathan said.“That isn’t good enough. I need to know what to expect.”Pressured...
John Leaman, the anal retentive on the team, had spent days studying a map with the aim of profiling the offenders. The theory was that referencing the crime locations would pinpoint the likeliest area where the perpetrators had their base. If these had been one-man crimes, it might have worked. ...
Generally he would wake feeling worse than when he closed his eyes. Today he had no choice. He was dog tired and the painkillers acted as sedatives. After getting home at five, he made short work of a stack of cheese and pickle sandwiches, opened a pouch of tuna for the cat and fell into bed. Goo...
the charge nurse said when Julie Hargreaves enquired about Winston Billington. The “dear” was kindly meant; the nurse had taken her for a relative, mishearing “DI” as “Di,” a common error. Julie went over to the uniformed embodiment of the police, a youthful constable who was sitting bored in the...
TRUNDLED out of Highbury and Islington station and along the line. Its rhythmic snorts were replaced by unmechanical sounds. Harsh, stomach-wrenching coughs echoed in the tunnel leading to the platform. Then the clatter of heavily shod boots and shoes. The unexpected influx of midnight passengers...
AGATHA CHRISTIE DID IT. The evidence was plain to see, but no one did see for more than a day. Robert Ripple’s corpse was cold on the bookshop floor. It must have been there right through Monday, the day Precious Finds was always closed. Poor guy, he was discovered early Tuesday in the section he...
"Face up to it, Pete—you've run out of time. You can't solve that little girl's problem." "Which problem is that?" She sighed. "Oh, don't get pernickety, love. It's too early in the day." To demonstrate good will, he offered to put a slice of bread in the toaster for her. "I was only asking you t...
It was fixed for the week before Ascot, at the Central Criminal Court. The preliminary hearings at the inquest and police court had set out the facts like visiting cards. The deceased, Josiah Perceval, had been employed as assistant to Mr Howard Cromer, the owner of a photographic studio in Kew. ...
If you’re a crime writer, as I am, the question is loaded. Do I have personal experience of disposing of bodies and evading the police? And when I give my truthful answer, that my ideas come from numerous sources, I sense the questioner thinking that’s a cop-out, a typical piece of evasion from s...
The ash-wood weapons, some sixteen feet in length, looked and sounded dangerous, even though the moves were being choreographed by an expert, an officer of the Sealed Knot. Knowing Ingeborg’s steely resolve to be at least as capable as any man, Diamond wasn’t surprised to see her wielding her pik...
It was 6 a.m., and he was seated at a bare wooden table in the kitchen of the dynamiters’ house. Much against his expectation, they had passed through Gravesend Reach and got back without further incident. Devlin, with the strain of the night’s doings written on his face, had gone straight to bed...
Share in this unique project, the writing of a real crime e-book by two authors currently under investigation for murder. Read that again if you like. It is true. We are suspects in the Chichester arson attacks and also members of the writers' circle that is the focus of these crimes. We will giv...
The first, from the Wimbledon scene of crime people, had an immense amount of detail about hairs and fibres found in Dalton Monnington’s car, but nothing to connect the travelling salesman with Delia Williamson. He slapped it on the heap of papers waiting to be filed. Monnington was old news. &nb...
The first thing, the first in Peter Diamond's day, was the bleep of the phone beside his bed at 6.30 a.m. A message from the Assistant Chief Constable, no less, relayed by the duty inspector at police headquarters. Diamond was instructed to report to headquarters at 8.30. ...
'We have a positive ID on the body in Crescent Gardens. Confirmed as Mrs Stephanie Diamond, wife of Detective Superintendent Diamond. I repeat. . .' Diamond remained on his knees beside his dead wife, registering nothing of what was going on around him. This was not self-pity. The focus of his gr...
The shoreline at Selsey had always appealed to her as a place to walk: stimulating, never the same. And now its possibilities had increased. The night had been mild for late September, but when she arrived in the car park at the end of the High Street, an offshore wind was...