2003 mystery, the eighth book in Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. Is
a killing on a beach connected with the murder of a celebrity film
director?
The solid material here is the grind of police investigation,
following up leads even though they're likely to be false simply
because one has to cover everything. The book introduces Inspector
Hen(rietta) Mallin of the Bognor Regis CID, a small joke in itself;
this seems to be the genesis of a small spin-off series (two books so
far), but as someone of equal status with Diamond and in a different
police force she works well as a sounding-board and fellow
investigator – rather than in the sidekick role formerly occupied by
Julie Hargreaves. I'll be reading the first spin-off at least.
Because of that grind, the book starts very slowly: the identity of
the victim on the beach isn't known for quite a while, and Peter
Diamond himself doesn't show up until around a quarter of the way
through. The narrative also comes over as a little old-fashioned; did
techies still read computer magazines in 2003? I know I didn't. If as
a policeman you have the name, sex, and approximate age of a child who
may be germane to a murder enquiry, can't you just pester the
education authorities or Benefits Agency for an address?
There are clues which can be put together, and plenty of false leads,
but the real enjoyment I gained from this book was in the character of
Diamond himself, recovering from a major incident (in the previous
book) and working out how to go on with his life. Secondary characters
are also good, especially the rest of the Bath CID team, though the
most junior member is a bit too incompetent considering her past
triumphs, and Diamond's boss and bane the ACC Georgina Dallymore is
rather a cardboard cutout here.
The solution is rather too pat for my taste. There's some effort to
explain how certain crucial information got into the hands of the
villain(s), but it's neither convincing not sufficient. And the
villain(s) is/are just not terribly interesting; obviously someone
who commits murder isn't likely to be especially smart or
well-adjusted, but to be a worthy subject of a mystery such a person
has to be interesting. The various motivations and plots just don't
seem to hang together, some of the bad behaviour is inconsistent with
established character, and there's no explanation at all of how a
certain piece of obscure local knowledge was gained. It was all a bit
anticlimactic, and this is the first time I've been disappointed with
the ending of a Lovesey book.
Followed in this series by The Secret Hangman.
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