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...

"Head of the Bath murder squad, Peter Diamond isn't exactly up to his elbows in bodies in the placid resort. He's bored, a bit testy, and ready for an old-fashioned mystery. Alas, when one does come along it's not in his division; it's a half-million-dollar heist by a thief who first has sent a rhyming riddle to all the local radio stations. Diamond is ready to throw his weight around to help solve the robbery, but before he can step on any toes,...

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.

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...

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...

When three policemen are murdered in the Bath area by a sniper who eludes authorities and younger detectives, Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond embarks on what becomes one of the most dangerous cases of his life.

When a competitive-bidding war for a rare carved stone is interrupted by three masked men who kill the highest bidder, Peter Diamond and his team investigate the carving's mystical origins while Ingeborg goes undercover to learn about the murder weapon.

"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...

"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...

"If there's one thing Bath detective 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-wannabee private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz (his card claims he Getz results). But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, Septimus "Seppy" Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter, Ruby, has hired Johnny Getz to find...