FICTION
Released: Dec. 5, 1996
"Adequate Lovesey, then, but hardly destined to be a favorite."
The fourth of Lovesey's contemporary Peter Diamond procedurals (The Summons, 1995, etc.)—a series that has added substantially to his collection of awards—is cast in the form of a homage to mystery fans.
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FICTION
Released: April 15, 1998
"As Diamonds go, give it, maybe, a couple of carats."
It's tough heading a murder squad when nobody's getting murdered, and the good people of Bath persist in being good.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 2000
"Everything the cerebral puzzle-addict craves, from tempting red herrings to literary arcana to deliciously plotted surprises."
Nobody is better at misdirecting the gentle reader and snaking together multiple storylines than the wily Lovesey, who in his sixth case for Peter Diamond, tendentious head of Bath's Murder Squad (Upon a Dark Night, 1998, etc.), unearths various body parts underneath number five, Abbey Churchyard, the former home of Frankenstein's creator Mary Shelley.
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FICTION
Released: Feb. 1, 2001
"A bit too much Goodbody derring-do, however, but Lovesey adds nice classic-puzzle elements."
Lovesey, honored this year with the British Crime Writers Association's Diamond Dagger award for lifetime excellence, sets three reporters loose to discover why Hitler confidante Rudolf Hess, the Nazi who secretly reoutfitted a Messerschmitt and flew it from Germany to Scotland to establish peace negotiations during WW11, was the sole occupant of Spandau prison never to be released.
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FICTION
Released: April 1, 2001
"Gleefully demonic, offsetting church homilies with garden poisons, piety with avarice, and a proper tea with a libido-unleashing tumbler of Scotch."
Lovesey, a recipient of the British Crime Writers' Lifetime Achievement award, proves his mettle here with a deliciously wicked village mystery centering on Otis Joy, the rector of St.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2001
"Fully dimensional characters, juicy plotting, and more twists than the Hampton Court maze."
About to be shunted off to Bristol and replaced as the head of Bath's Murder Squad on the eve of his 50th birthday, irascible Peter Diamond is gleeful at the reprieve a body found in Royal Victoria Park buys him—until he gets a good look and realizes it's his own wife Stephanie with two bullet holes in her head.
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FICTION
Released: Dec. 1, 2001
"Any psychiatrist who calls his dinner companion "little lady" ought to be defrocked, but Lovesey does offer a perceptive analysis of TV types, university infighting, and sublimations that barely mask psychosis."
First published in Great Britain a dozen years ago, this minor work by Diamond Dagger winner Lovesey is set, atypically for him, in New York City, where doctoral candidate Sarah Jordan's preeminence in spider research is being challenged by Don Rigden, a new graduate student at Henry Hudson University.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2003
"Brusque Diamond and plainspoken Mallin make an engaging team, and few, if any, can top Lovesey in not only creating believable red herrings and plot twists but whetting an appetite for rereading the English classics from Austen to Coleridge."
The master of the cozy cerebral mystery pairs the Bath Murder Squad's cantankerous Peter Diamond (Diamond Dust, 2002, etc.) with cigar-smoking Henrietta "Hen" Mallin, Senior Investigating Officer at Bognor Regis, and sets them loose to find the audacious murderer of crime profiler Emma Tysoe, who was strangled on a Sussex beach alongside other bathers who noticed nothing amiss.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2005
"Lovesey, who can out–Christie Dame Agatha when he sets his mind to it, offers a smorgasbord of red herrings, a nifty plot twist, charming bits of doggerel and delicious digs at writers of the unpublishable."
An old-fashioned whodunit with the style and deviousness you'd expect from a master storyteller.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2007
"Lovesey (The Circle, 2005, etc.), master of the switchback twist, has several in store here, but savvy readers may find them a notch or so below his crafty best."
FICTION
Released: April 1, 2008
"Lovesey makes it virtually impossible to figure out whodunit before he reveals all. Catnip for enthusiasts of the classic puzzler."
Master craftsman Lovesey (
The Secret Hangman, 2007, etc.) flaunts his deviousness with a plethora of wickedly plausible suspects.
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FICTION
Released: May 1, 2009
"A roundup of the most genial puzzles from Lovesey (The Headhunters, 2008, etc.) presents a welcome relief from the noir psychodramas so many other practitioners have on offer."
Fourteen short stories originally published between 2003 and 2007--with one exception harking back to 1989--that do full credit to Lovesey's reputation as a Diamond Dagger winner.
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FICTION
Released: Sept. 1, 2009
"History, humor, inspired clues, maniacal twists and a paean to the beauty of the Bath countryside. Lovesey, who's won every prize going, deserves another for Diamond's tenth."
Inspector Peter Diamond, in full curmudgeon mode, detects a fresh corpse at a Civil War (that's the Cavaliers versus the Roundheads) reenactment.
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FICTION
Released: June 1, 2011
"Far from Lovesey at his best, without the wit, trickery and demonic plotting that has earned him silver, gold and diamond daggers from the British Crime Writers' Association."
FICTION
Released: June 12, 2012
"Nobody but Lovesey could thump out a gritty procedural yet instill Bath with so much charm and history that readers will have to put it on their bucket lists."
How many mistakes can Detective Superintendent Diamond make and still catch the Somerset Sniper?
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