Description de l’éditeur
Just outside Bath, on Lansdown Hill, where an annual Civil War re-enactment takes place, two cavalry soldiers make a shocking discovery: a human femur. Could it belong to a long-dead soldier of the English Civil War? When forensic investigators uncover the rest of the skeleton—minus the skull—Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond learns that the remains belong not to a seventeenth-century soldier but to a young woman who
died only a decade or so ago.
Then one of the re-enactors, Rupert Hope, a lecturer at Bristol University, is found dead on the very same hill. Suddenly, Diamond has two possible murder investigations he’s keen on linking together. But with little to go on beyond nearly impossible to identify remains and a victim few people seem to know much about, can he prove they’re related? The only apparent link is Lansdown Hill itself.
As Diamond digs deeper, he continually comes up against his boss, Georgina, and the Lansdown Society—a small organization devoted to preserving and protecting the hill—which she happens to be a part of. What other secrets could Lansdown Hill have kept hidden?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Silver Dagger Award winner Lovesey's 10th Peter Diamond investigation (after 2007's The Secret Hangman) may offer a less intricate plot and more procedural work than usual, but Diamond remains one of the most realistic and human of fictional sleuths. During a recreation of an English Civil War battle outside Bath, Rupert Hope, an academic who's playing a cavalier, and another participant discover a human femur. Presented with this minor puzzle, the police eventually unearth the entire skeleton, minus the skull. After someone bludgeons Hope to death, Diamond wonders whether Hope's murder and the headless skeleton are connected, and his team redoubles their efforts to identify it. A zipper found near the skeleton may point to a link with London's Russian community. While some readers will anticipate the solution with little trouble, sharp prose and characterization make this another winner in this enduring series.
