Peter Lovesey
1) Showstopper
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Description
"Since the start of the hit TV show Swift in 2013, its cast and crew have been plagued by misfortune. First, a star actress pulls out of the show before it begins-and by 2019, there have been multiple injuries by fall, fire, or drowning; two deaths; and two missing persons cases. The popular media around Bath, England, quickly decides it's a curse, but is it as simple as that? Is someone behind these fishy incidents? Peter Diamond, Chief Superintendent...
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Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 8
Description
In his eighth Inspector Diamond mystery (after 2002's Diamond Dust), Lovesey demonstrates, lest anyone doubt, how richly he deserves the British Crime Writers Association's Lifetime Achievement award. It's been about a year since Inspector Diamond's wife was murdered, and he's back at the helm of the Bath homicide squad when he hears from Inspector Henrietta "Hen" Mallin. Hen and her team have identified a murder victim found on a Sussex beach as...
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Series
Sergeant Cribb mysteries volume 2
Pub. Date
2008
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Description
“A rich and unusual mystery, with suspense enough for the most confirmed addict.” —Los Angeles Times
Pugilism, a brutal form of bare-knuckle boxing, is forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Sergeant Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, finding a corpse whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is sent to infiltrate the gang, which...
Pugilism, a brutal form of bare-knuckle boxing, is forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Sergeant Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, finding a corpse whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is sent to infiltrate the gang, which...
Author
Series
Sergeant Cribb mysteries volume 1
Pub. Date
2008
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Description
A Mystery Writers of America “100 Best Mysteries of All Time”
Crime fiction master Peter Lovesey’s debut mystery introduces Victorian detective Sergeant Cribb as he investigates a speed-walking race turned deadly.
“An outstanding period piece with plummy characters and a killer neatly hidden.” —Los Angeles Times, Dorothy B. Hughes
London, 1879. Crowds...
Crime fiction master Peter Lovesey’s debut mystery introduces Victorian detective Sergeant Cribb as he investigates a speed-walking race turned deadly.
“An outstanding period piece with plummy characters and a killer neatly hidden.” —Los Angeles Times, Dorothy B. Hughes
London, 1879. Crowds...
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Series
Pub. Date
2013
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Description
"Ingenious . . . Lovers of good music and a good mystery should not miss this delightful tale." —Washington Post Book World
Peter Diamond, head of the Criminal Investigation Division in scenic Bath, England, is investigating the murder of a young woman whose body has been found in the canal, the only clue to her identity a tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth. For Diamond, who wouldn’t
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Series
Pub. Date
2019
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Description
Introducing Victorian England’s most illustrious amateur sleuth (if not necessarily its most adept): Bertie, Prince of Wales, who can’t help but poke his royal nose into a suspicious-sounding circumstance.
Bertie, Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, is a charismatic but self-indulgent man who enjoys the finer things in life, including dining, flirting, and flitting from party to party with his entire thirty-person...
Bertie, Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, is a charismatic but self-indulgent man who enjoys the finer things in life, including dining, flirting, and flitting from party to party with his entire thirty-person...
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Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 15
Pub. Date
[2015]
Description
In a Sussex town on the south coast of England, a widely disliked art teacher at a posh private girls school disappears without explanation. None of her students miss her boring lessons, especially since her replacement is a devilishly hunky male teacher with a fancy car. But then her name shows up on a police missing persons list. What happened to Miss Gibbon, and why does no one seem to care?Meanwhile, detective Peter Diamond finds himself in Sussex,...
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Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 2
Description
One-time police detective Peter Diamond loses his job as a security guard when he fails to spot a small Japanese child hiding in the furniture department of Harrods. Weeks later, she's still unclaimed; Diamond is unable to forget the frightened eyes of the silent little girl and takes on the challenge of uncovering her identity. Now Diamond is back in the sleuthing business, following a trail that leads from London to New York to Tokyo and to a shocking...
11) Beau Death
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"In the seventeenth installment in Peter Lovesey's timeless British detective series, Peter Diamond digs deep into Bath history to ferret out the secrets of one of its most famous (and scandalous) icons: Richard "Beau" Nash, who might have been the victim of a centuries-old murder. Bath, England: A wrecking crew is demolishing a row of townhouses in order to build a grocery store when they uncover a skeleton in one of the attics. The dead man is wearing...
12) Abracadaver
Author
Series
Sergeant Cribb mysteries volume 3
Pub. Date
2009, c1972
Description
A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade....
13) Skeleton Hill
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On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the participants discover a skeleton that turns out to be female, headless, and only about twenty years old. Two weeks later, the body of one of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is found nearby, at Beckford's Tower, a local folly. He has been murdered. This turns out to be one of the most puzzling cases...
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Series
Pub. Date
2019.
Description
"On a fateful July morning in 2015, a riot takes hold of Her Majesty's Prison in Bream, Gloucestershire, with fatal consequences. The staff is caught completely off-guard--their supervising warden, Governor Magda Lyle, hasn't shown up for work, and the prisoners are able to start a fire that nearly results in a mass escape. Three years later and forty miles south, a most controversial wedding is about to take place in Bath's gorgeous Abbey, with a...
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2016.
Description
"Two police officers are about to head home after a long night shift when they receive one last call: a suspicious nude person has been spotted in the wee hours of the morning. En route to the call, the patrol car spins off the road, killing one of the exhausted cops instantly and leaving the other in critical condition. Whenever a police car is involved in an accident, the matter must be taken very seriously. Inspector Peter Diamond is assigned to...
16) The reaper
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Otis Joy, the popular and handsome young rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in Oxford, England, is accused of embezzling church funds and ordered to resign, but only until the bishop who accuses him commits suicide, followed by another death, and then another.
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Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 9
Pub. Date
[2007]
Description
"Widowed Inspector Peter Diamond is being pursued by a secret admirer even as he pursues a serial killer." "First, Delia Williams, a waitress with two young daughters, is reported missing by her mother. She is soon found dead in a public park, hung from the crossbar of a swing set. It looks like suicide but the postmortem reveals that she was murdered." "Delia was divorced, living with a new man. Her former husband lives in the vicinity. And she had...
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Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 1
Pub. Date
[1991]
Description
Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit. Struggling with a jigsaw puzzle of truant choirboys, teddy bears, a black Mercedes and Jane...
19) The circle
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Series
Inspector Hen Mallin novels volume 1
Pub. Date
2005.
Description
Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class among the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning...
20) The vault
Author
Series
Peter Diamond mysteries volume 6
Pub. Date
2000.
Description
A skeletal hand is unearthed in the vault under the Pump Room in Bath, England, near the site where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Then a skull is excavated. The bones came from different corpses, and one is modern. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must solve a series of crimes including murder and forgery, requiring a knowledge of history, nineteenth-century art, literature . . . and human nature.