DIAMOND AND THE EYE is published in the UK by Sphere on July 8, 2021
and in the US by Soho Press on October 12, 2021
THE SHEAR AMAZING SLEUTH
Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a twenty-first century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving ‘Pete’ in his investigation.
When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched. Diamond is forced to house his team in the dilapidated Corn Market building across the street. His problems grow when his boss appoints Lady Bede, from the Police Ethics Committee, as an observer. Worse still, Johnny conducts his own inquiry by latching onto Ruby’s stylish friend, a journalist called Olympia.
Shootings from a drive-by gunman at key players create mayhem and the pressure is really on. Can the team stop more killings in this normally peaceful city? What happened to Ruby’s father? And will Johnny crack the case before Diamond does?
This is the twentieth Peter Diamond novel. Books in the series have twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger as well as the Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards and been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Peter is the only living British author to have been honoured with the two top honours in crime writing: the CWA/Cartier Diamond Dagger and Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.
Here’s a dip into the opening page:
‘Mind if I join you?’
Peter Diamond’s toes curled.
There’s no escape when you’re wedged into your favourite armchair in the corner of the lounge bar at the Francis observing the last rites of an exhausting week keeping a cap on crime. Tankard in hand, your third pint an inch from your mouth, you want to be left alone.
The stranger’s voice was throaty, the accent faux American from a grainy black-and-white film a lifetime ago. This Bogart impersonator was plainly as English as a cricket bat. His face wasn’t Bogart’s and he wasn’t talking through tobacco smoke, but he held a cocktail stick between two fingers as if it was a cigarette. Some years the wrong side of forty, he was dressed in a pale grey suit and floral shirt open at the neck to display a miniature magnifying glass on a leather cord.
‘Depends,’ Diamond said.
‘On what?’
‘Should I know you?’
‘No reason you should, bud.’
No one called Diamond ‘bud’. He’d have said so, but the soundtrack had already moved on.
‘I got your number. You’re the top gumshoe in this one-horse town and you’re here in the bar Friday nights when you’re not tied up on a case. What’s your poison? I’ll get you another.’
‘Don’t bother.’ Diamond wasn’t getting suckered into getting lumbered with a bar-room bore who called him bud and claimed to have got his number.
‘You’ll need something strong when you hear what I have to say.’ The bore pulled up a chair and the voice became even more husky. ‘Good to meet you, any road. I’m Johnny Getz, the private eye.’
‘Say that again, the last part.’
‘Private eye.’
Against all the evidence that this was a send-up, Diamond had to hear more. ‘Private eye? I thought they went out with Dick Tracy.’
‘Dick Tracy was a cop.’
‘Sam Spade, then. We’re talking private detectives, are we? I didn’t know we had one in Bath.’
‘What do you mean – “one”? I could name at least six others. The difference is they’re corporate. I’m the real deal. I work alone.’
‘Where?’
‘Over the hairdresser’s in Kingsmead Square.’ An address that lacked something compared to a seedy San Francisco side-street, which was probably why the self-styled private eye added, ‘The Shear Amazing Sleuth. Like it?’
