Marilyn Stasio
A real brain-banger....This pyrotechnic teaser had my head spinning.
-- New York Times Book Review
Mystery News
[A] fast-moving, full-bodied, engrossing tale...Diamond is a great invention.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The Last Detective (1992) inaugurated this series with a bang. It was followed by Diamond Solitaire (1993) and 1995's Edgar-nominated The Summons. With this fourth installment, veteran English author Lovesey gives us his laconic Bath policeman Peter Diamond in full dazzle. The Bloodhounds are a diverse group of mystery fans who meet in a dark crypt and talk. One night before the subject of locked-room puzzles is brought up, Milo, one of the group, opens a prized book and finds the rare Penny Black stamp recently stolen from a nearby museum. Milo is suitably puzzled. A little later, Milo is found dead in his tightly locked riverboat. The coppers have two perplexing puzzles to solve, and Diamond's sharp temper is soon sorely tested by the thief/killer, who sends the police and the media cute riddles. Diamond comes up with a perfectly workable scenario for what happened, which readers are given just enough time to swallow before Lovesey reveals the real thief and killer. With this especially effective conclusion, Lovesey demonstrates that his embrace of crime fiction reaches from John Dickson Carr to Andrew Vachss as he skillfully pays homage to the old style whodunit in this thoroughly modern mystery. (Dec.)
Kirkus Reviews
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. In bustling Bath, a small band of eccentrics gather in a church crypt to argue the virtues of the various genres of crime fiction. As Golden Age devotees face off with noir adherents, local Detective Superintendent Diamond and his colleagues begin receiving rhymed notes threatening theft. And, indeed, a priceless stamp is taken from the Postal Museum; just as the mystery aficionados are considering varying their program to discuss the case, the stamp appears in one of the participants John Dickson Carr paperback! Sooner than you can say "locked room," the body of another participant is found in a locked—um—boat. The formal interviews of the Bath police impinge piquantly on the private gossip and even more private weaknesses—adultery, drunkenness, poor taste—of this group of colorfully drawn obsessives. Lovesey, always something of a Golden Age writer out of his time, provides some ingenious variations on the old "locked room" mystery formula while gleefully lecturing the reader on genre lore.
Still, the author violates the prewar code among mystery writers that protected the reader, handling some of his more sympathetic characters with absent-minded brutality. Adequate Lovesey, then, but hardly destined to be a favorite.
From the Publisher
"Lovesey demonstrates that his embrace of crime fiction reaches from John Dickson Carr to Andrew Vachss as he skillfully pays homage to the old style whodunit in this thoroughly modern mystery." —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
