Showing results by author "Peter Lovesey" in All Categories

Tough, shrewd and determined, Sergeant Cribb is a stalwart of Scotland Yard's newly formed Criminal Investigation Department. Aided and abetted by the loyal, stolid Constable Thackeray, he pounds the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London, tracking down murderers and bringing them to justice.

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit.

Peter Diamond, ex-CID and notoriously difficult to work with, is sacked from his latest job as a security guard in Harrods. Doggedly he turns his sleuthing skills to unraveling the mystery of a little Japanese girl abandoned in London. Naomi, as she is known, exhibits the classic symptoms of an autistic child. Diamond regards her first as a challenge and soon as someone he cares passionately about and devotes himself to communicating with the child.

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger and shortlisted for the Edgar Award. The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once head of the murder squad there, he is now out of touch in his retirement, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years previously, Diamond headed the investigation of the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist, her mouth stuffed with red roses.

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

London, 1879. Crowds have gathered at Islington's chilly Agricultural Hall to place their bets on who will become the next world champion in a six-day, 500-mile speed-walking race, the wobble. When one of the highly favored contenders dies under suspicious circumstances, Sergeant Cribb also has a race on his hands - to pursue a ruthless murderer.

Detective Inspector Peter Diamond is keen to get his teeth into a new case. So, when a call comes in that a woman's body has been found in one of Bath's parks, he arrives quickly at the scene - only to discover that the victim is his wife.

A young woman emerges from a coma. Who is she, 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 boisterous shoplifter she meets in a homeless hostel, takes up her cause and names her Rose. Peter Diamond is already investigating a suspicious death - a woman has plunged from the roof of Bath's Royal Crescent during a party, and none of the guests seem to know who she is.

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger, the Barry Award and the Macavity Award. 'Darling, if ever I've met a group of potential murderers anywhere, it's the Bloodhounds.' Thus says one of the members of the Bloodhounds of Bath, a society that meets in a crypt to discuss crime novels. But to their latest recruit, they seem just 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.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, 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.

In the small hours of a Sunday morning in the city of Bath a policeman on beat duty is shot dead by an unseen gunman - 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, Ken Lockton, 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 burly CID chief.

Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a 21st-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.

When his former deputy, Julie, invites Detective Peter Diamond and his partner Paloma to spend a week at her home in the depths of rural Somerset, Diamond is horrified. What could be worse than seven days in the back end of nowhere with nothing to do? But it turns out that Julie has an ulterior motive. A local woman is doing time for manslaughter after a wild party ended in a tragic accident: a man suffocated in a silo of grain. Nobody in the village has much sympathy for Claudia, the unruly daughter of a wealthy local farmer.

When a severed hand from the vault of Bath Abbey Churchyard arrives on Peter Diamond's desk, he is delighted to hear that, far from being a medieval relic, it is from the 1980s. But the vault is part of the house where Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written, and a fanatical American professor is thwarting their investigation. Events are complicated even further when the professor's wife goes missing....

There's plenty of drama, of the wrong kind, when a fading pop star wanting to launch an acting career at Bath's Theatre Royal gets taken to hospital with third degree burns. In the best theatrical tradition, the show goes on, but the agony turns to murder. Bath's top detective, Peter Diamond, is on the case—but for reasons he can't understand, he suffers a physical reaction amounting to phobia each time he goes near the theatre. Before he can find the killer, he must face his own demons.

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?

In Victorian London, race-walking, or 'wobbles', is all the rage. So on a Monday morning in November 1879, the crowds gather for Islington's bizarre six-day endurance walking race. By Tuesday, one of the contestants is dead. Tetanus from a blister is assumed, but then there is a second death, and this time it's definitely murder. A bemused Sergeant Cribb from Scotland Yard is called in, along with Constable Thackeray, and they soon discover that something foul is at play.

Bath detective Peter Diamond is having woman trouble. His boss wants him to find the missing daughter of one of her friends. He is not enthusiastic. A woman calling herself his Secret Admirer wants to arrange a date in a pub. He tries ignoring her. And his colleague, sexy Ingeborg Smith, distracts the murder squad from their duties. Then a woman's body is found hanging from a playground swing, with a suspicious second ligature mark around her neck and a very colourful past. As more hangings are discovered, Diamond is certain that a secret hangman is at work in the city.

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.

A twisty collection of short stories from the master of classic crime fiction, Peter Lovesey, one of which stars his most popular creation, Peter Diamond. More than 50 years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That short story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey's life-long passion for short form crime fiction.