It’s a tricky balance to write a detective series that continues to engage its followers while being welcoming to new readers. When I began Donna Leon’s Brunetti series someplace in the middle, I was inspired to read every single preceding one (ditto with Ruth Rendell’s memorable Inspector Wexford). Without knowing their pasts, I was enchanted by Brunetti and Wexford, who, although occasionally grumpy, are intelligent, empathic people. I wanted to know how they became the detectives they are, flaws and all. Peter Lovesey’s Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has featured in sixteen novels, and like many bookstore browsers, I happened to pick up the most recent, number 16. As with Brunetti and Wexford, I felt the weight of Diamond’s earlier, documented experiences as I read: the death of Diamond’s wife by shooting, and the complex relationship between Diamond and his colleagues. The book is interspersed with excerpts from a diary, which hint at motivations and plans for murder. When the story opens, two police officers working the night shift in Bath, Somerset, England, try unsuccessfully to ticket an old man on a motorized tricycle. A terrible car accident follows, and Diamond embarks on an unauthorized investigation of the deaths of many senior citizens who were acquainted with the old man on his trike. Lovesey cleverly drives us down a series of dead ends, even calling into question whether the victims had been murdered at all. If I knew more of Diamond’s back story, I likely would have been more charmed by his narrow-minded rudeness as he starts down the correct path towards the murderer, but without those fifteen prior novels, I found him wholly unlikeable, and his rudeness towards his inferiors distasteful. Although I must respect Lovesey’s twists and turns, I will be leaving Diamond behind.
December 24, 2019