Upon a Dark Night
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4.4 • 35 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“The threads of Peter Lovesey’s new Peter Diamond mystery, Upon a Dark Night, twist up so neatly they make a perfect hangman’s noose—another triumph of plotting from this master of the classic puzzle form.”—The New York Times Book Review
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 to solve: A woman has plunged to her death from the roof of a local landmark while half the young people of Bath partied below, and an elderly farmer has shot himself. Are these apparent suicides what they seem, or are there sinister forces at work? And might the amnesiac woman hold the key to both cases?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For long stretches of the narrative, Bath's most cantankerous copper, outsized Peter Diamond, barely registers in the action as he investigates two deaths: a lonely old farmer sticks a shotgun under his chin and fires; and, at a wild party, a girl falls from the roof of a building. The dead girl is missing a shoe, and Diamond soon theorizes that the farmer's arms were too short to have pulled the trigger. Unknown to Diamond, the key to the two kills is an amnesiac woman found injured in a hospital parking lot. A shoplifter named Ada names her Rose and befriends her. Ada is able to stop a young man who tries to abduct Rose but then reluctantly releases Rose to a woman claiming to be her sister. Not fully convinced, the crusty shoplifter gives a skeptical Diamond an earful. Odd holes dug in the old farmer's yard indicate treasure hunting. One of the foursome who gave the ill-fated party is a hunter. The farmer's daughter is missing, and the German woman living at the hostel with Ada is revealed as the owner of the missing shoe. Lovesey (Bloodhounds, etc.) is a past master of the traditional crime novel. His clues are artfully placed, and Diamond is a believably flawed soul, sexist and impulsive, yet essentially good-hearted. Such a tangled plot would snare an author of less skill, but Lovesey maintains virtuosic control and delivers an unmistakable highlight in a long career already well-garlanded with awards and acclaim.
