Product details
Biographical note
Born in Middlesex In 1936, Peter Lovesey was the author of 43 novels and seven collections of short stories. He is best known for his eight Victorian crime novels featuring Seargent Cribb and his flagship Peter Diamond series, which began with his Antony-award winning novel, The Last Detective, in 1991. Lovesey was the recipient of numerous awards over his lifetime, including the CWA Silver Dagger, multiple Macavity and Antony awards. He was one of a select number of writers to have been awarded both the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Special Edgar and the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He died in 2025 at the age of 88.A brilliant performance
Times Literary Supplement
A terrific job
The Times
Mr Lovesey maintains a wonderful tone throughout . . . A comedy of bad manners, full of oddball characters and wacky events develops into a perfectly realised murder mystery whose skilful misdirection never oversteps the bounds of fair play
The Wall St Journal
A bravura performance from a veteran showman: slyly paced, marbled with surprise and, in the end, strangely affecting
New York Times Book Review
A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath, by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No-one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door-stopping and deduction: he is the last detective.
Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit. Eventually, despite disastrous personal consequences, and amongst Bath's rambling buildings and formidable history, the last detective exposes the uncomfortable truth . . .
The very first Peter Diamond mystery, and Anthony Award winning novel, from the superb Peter Lovesey.