The Last Detective
Detective Peter Diamond Book 1
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4.3 • 30 Ratings
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
The very first Peter Diamond mystery, and Anthony Award winning novel, from the superb Peter Lovesey.
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. Eventually, despite disastrous personal consequences, and amongst Bath's rambling buildings and formidable history, the last detective exposes the uncomfortable truth . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irascible, corpulent, cynical Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Avon and Somerset murder squad attributes Britain's decline as a world power to the abolition of capital punishment in 1964. Spurning computer gadgetry, he sticks to common sense, index cards and gumshoeing: ``Knocking on doors. That's how we get results.'' The almost clueless case of the naked woman's body found floating in Chew Valley Lake poses a supreme challenge for the detective, who is anxious to clear his name of recent charges of brutality. The belated identification of the victim as actress Geraldine Snoo, written out of a BBC soap opera two years before, leads to one surprise after another, including the claim of the victim's professor husband that she had tried to kill him, and culminating in the suspenseful trial of divorced mother Dana Didrikson whom Geraldine had accused of trying to steal her husband. Diamond refutes genetic fingerprinting evidence against Dana and, in a stunning last scene, reveals the killer's identity. Lovesy, winner of a Silver Dagger Award for Waxwork and a Golden Dagger for The False Inspector Dew, uses Bath as his setting, treating us to a great chase through the Roman baths for which the town is named. This witty novel gets the new Perfect Crime imprint (formerly Crime Club) off to a flying start.
