Today's novel is still from his most popular series, Peter Diamond, but this is his fifth.
Peter Diamond, who resigned at the end of his debut novel to begin a career as a private detective, has returned to the police force after some time (and a few novels): he is now Superintendent and Head of the Bath Homicide Squad. In this capacity, he is tasked with two crimes, one after the other, seemingly unrelated: the suicide of an elderly farmer, who committed suicide with a gunshot to the chin; and the fall of a young German woman from the parapet of a house.
The first was discovered a week later: a rotting corpse, its head destroyed by the gunshot that exposed the skull and scattered brain and bones (a rather unusual way to commit suicide). The second death was almost contemporaneous with the discovery, and occurred during a large party following the occupation of a house by the villagers, celebrating the lottery wins of four of the house's residents. This death, too, while at first glance appearing to be an accident or suicide, nevertheless has a peculiarity: a sneaker is missing. A search for it is carried out on the roof, first at the site of the fall, and also elsewhere, but it turns up nowhere. Where did it end up? Unless someone took it: the victim appears to have been drunk, but the autopsy later reveals that she was perfectly conscious and had perhaps only drank a can of beer, if anything. Did someone push her? And why?
The investigation is still in the dark.
Along with these two criminal events, a third incident captures Diamond's attention: a woman named Rose Black was found in a hospital parking lot, injured, with cracked ribs, and, most importantly, with no memory. After a quick hospital stay, and not knowing who she was (no documents were found), she was entrusted to a social worker, until a woman named Doreen, posing as her half-sister, came to take her in. What's striking, however, is that everything the woman said turns out to be false: she doesn't live where she was supposed to, because the house and street don't exist, and there's no contact information for her family of origin. The result: Rose has disappeared. Now, what does Rose have to do with the other two deaths? Nothing. And yet...
The first death seems to be related to some Saxon relics found nearby, and in fact, Diamond discovers that someone had previously dug up the victim's property several times, searching for something.
Nothing is clear about the second case, until something happens that turns on Diamond's fateful lightbulb: Hildegarde Henkel, the German girl who fell from the roof of a house onto the street, was staying in the same hostel where Rose Black had also been taken in, and the former curiously resembled the latter. Is it possible that someone, intending to kill Rose, killed Hildegarde? And what's more, the hospital parking lot overlooks the highway leading to the farm where the first suicide occurred, Farmer Gladstone. Is it possible that Rose, walking on that highway, was hit by a car, and was coming from the direction of the farm?
So Diamond, along with Inspector Wigfull, from whom he stole the job, and Inspector Julie Hargreaves, begins investigating Gladstone's past, antiquities hunters, and Saxon relics, to finally identify the killer—already a strong suspect in the German woman's suicide, and now wanted for Rose's kidnapping and Gladstone's death—and to stop him before he kills again.
What's fascinating about this novel is how Lovesey manages to weave a story based on a few, even seemingly unrelated, elements:
There's the adventurous tale of the treasure that everyone seeks but no one finds, which even the beautiful Rose, whose real name is Christine Gladstone, hints at to those who want to kill her so they won't (and then actually finds it behind a bricked-up fireplace); There's one of the most typical elements of the English detective story: the return of the heir, Christine, who, after her mother's death, learns of her father's identity and returns to him, only to find him dead.
A story set in the quintessential English countryside, so dear to Agatha Christie but also, more recently, to Inspector Barnaby.
And an investigation that seems like a procedural because it unfolds through police investigations, but which actually draws on the insights of Peter Diamond, an anti-hero, an anti-cop, who is too gruff and testy to befriend his subordinates, too unconventional to be rewarded by his superiors, and above all, unconventional: a policeman who avoids autopsies like the plague, inventing a thousand different excuses.
Peter actually drops hints here and there, and I think he expected a reader of a certain age to be able to figure out where he was going: when he mentions on several occasions that the road to the farm was Route 46, and that Rose was found in a parking lot accessible by Route 46—well, if you're a reader accustomed to clues, you have to figure out 2+2=4, right? I quickly realized that Rose was immersed in the story of the "suicided" farmer, precisely from these cryptic references. And if someone reads a novel completely detached from what they're reading, well, that's another matter.
The only clue that seems a bit far-fetched to me is having revealed too early the identity of the sole suspect in the death of the young German "suicide," unless that was also intentional. From that point on, the reader is led to wonder how the sole suspect, if it really is him, could fit into the story of Rose and old Gladstone. Or perhaps it was just a wild guess on Diamond's part.
Even if it turns out it wasn't.
A very beautiful novel, as usual, by the great Lovesey.
Pietro De Palma
Love the cover
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