Showing results by author "Peter Lovesey" in All Categories

Six months after the funeral of Danny Fox, his friend of more than 30 years, the narrator of this story takes a holiday in Florida, and is shocked to bump into Danny’s widow, who has seemingly remarried already. Uneasy with the cause of his friend’s death, he must follow the widow to get to the bottom of it.

When Gloria’s mother seemingly has a new fancy-man, she decides to humiliate them both by planting evidence of the affair in his car for his wife to find. But has she got the wrong end of the stick?

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. The narrator of this short story is unimpressed when all he is bequeathed by his uncle George upon his death, a notorious diamond robber, is his noisy, blue and yellow macaw parrot called Roger. But when Roger is stolen, it becomes clear the parrot is more valuable than the narrator thinks.

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s Halloween, and thunder cracks overhead in the village of Odstock. Dr Tom Staniforth is giving a lecture on the legend of Tom Scamp, who was wrongly hung for a crime he didn’t commit, and the gypsy curse that has haunted the village ever since. But when a member of the audience presents the rusted key which hasn’t opened the cursed church in over 200 years, will all of Tom’s scientific and verifiable evidence rendering the curse a myth be cast into doubt?

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s Christmas week, and there’s been a grisly discovery in Santa’s grotto: the head of the toy department has been murdered, a crossbow arrow through his chest. But when the store manager arrives, the body has vanished. It’s up to shop assistant Pauline, Santa and his elf to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Detective Peter Diamond, chief of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad, is taking a short holiday in the country. His former colleague Julie Hargreaves has invited Diamond and his partner, Paloma, to visit the idyllic village of Baskerville (no relation to the Sherlock Holmes story, so he's told). It turns out Julie's invitation was not without ulterior motives. The woman who owns the village's largest dairy farm has been convicted of manslaughter following a terrible accident in her grain silo.

Birds, Strangers and Psychos is a thrilling anthology that brings together the biggest names in mystery and crime fiction to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker whose name is synonymous with suspense. Acclaimed editor Maxim Jakubowski curates 24 original short stories, each inspired by the mood, tension, and style that defined Hitchcock’s groundbreaking work.

If there’s one thing detective Bath Peter Diamond has no patience for, it’s a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations - for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz. But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, “Seppy” Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter has hired Getz to find him. When a body is discovered in Seppy’s locked-up store, the missing persons case becomes a murder investigation, and now Diamond has to collaborate with the insufferable private eye.

Pop diva Clarion Calhoun has packed the house with her celebrity appearance in Bath’s Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she’s pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face. When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage.