Peter Lovesey

Cop To Corpse

A Peter Diamond Mystery

Hero to zero.

Cop to Corpse.

One minute PC Harry Tasker is strolling up Walcot Street, Bath, on foot patrol. The next he is shot through the head. No scream, no struggle, no last words. He is picked off, felled, dead.

Peter’s new book appears from Sphere in the UK on 5 April, 2012 and from Soho Press in the USA in June, 2012. Bath detective Peter Diamond takes on the most dangerous assignment of his career when he goes in search of the Somerset Stalker, a killer who is targeting policemen in West Country towns. After a constable from Diamond’s own police station is murdered in the small hours of a Sunday morning a desperate hunt follows. Action, menace and courage in the face of extreme danger are the driving forces of this story laced with the surprises that always lie in wait in a Lovesey novel.

UK Publisher: Sphere 2012 ISBN: 978-1847445711 – April 2012
US Publisher: Soho Press 2012 ISBN: 978-1616950781 – June 2012

Cop to Corpse is now in paperback

“Who’s gunning for beat cops? That’s the frantic question Peter Diamond must try to answer in British author Peter Lovesey’s superlative twelfth novel featuring the irascible Chief Superintendent . . . Lovesey, winner of the CWA Gold and Silver Dagger, leavens the suspense with Diamond’s trademark gallows humor, and closes with one of his cleverest solutions.” Publishers Weekly

“Nobody but Lovesey could thump out a gritty procedural yet instill Bath with so much charm and history that readers will have to put it on their bucket lists.” Kirkus Reviews

“I’ve been a fan of Peter Lovesey’s ever since Sergeant Cribb investigated a Victorian murder in Wobble to Death. Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series is one of the best of the current crop of British cop-shop books. His books always have a tight plot and very professional sets of clues and investigators, and this one, the 12th, is one of his best . . . If you’re not already a fan of Lovesey and Diamond, start here.” Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail, Toronto

“There are some days when only a good book will do. You want a novel written by a master of his craft. You want characters sympathetically but never sentimentally drawn, with believable relationships, good and bad. You want a topical crime (as I write, a gunman in France is taking out policemen with an assault rifle) and even if it looks as if a serial killer is at work, you don’t want to sigh at the vicious predictability of the murders. You want action, but never excessive violence, and certainly no gratuitous, stomach-churning detail. You want pace, controlled as if by a conductor on his podium. You want an always readable style, with the author assuming you’ve got an intelligent, educated mind, but never being self-indulgent and signalling every clever turn of expression with a wave. You want a frisson of pleasure at the entirely satisfying denouement. You want Peter Lovesey’s latest crime investigation, Cop to Corpse. Set in present day Bath, this exemplary crime novel traces the investigation when the third policeman in the area is killed by a sniper within twelve weeks. This isn’t Bath of the warm stone and wonderful vistas set jewel-like amidst green hills. It’s a city where people live and die, and the scenery conceals places to hide and hinders police operations. I don’t need to say any more. Go and buy it now.” Judith Cutler, Shots Crime & Thriller Ezine

“The pacing is relentless in this well-plotted mystery. The engaging Peter Diamond is rarely far afield, involved in nearly every aspect of the criminal investigation . . . Cop to Corpse is a strong entry in this already strong series of mysteries and police procedurals.” Mysterious Reviews

“Peter Lovesey is one writer who rises to the challenge again and again. . . . The story may be unorthodox, but it is certainly entertaining and proof – were it needed – that one of Britain’s most distinguished mystery novelists is still as good at keeping us guessing as ever. Long may he continue to entertain his many fans.” Martin Edwards, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?

Stagestruck: Wall Street Journal Review

Master Of Moods, Comic And Grim

[This review of Stagestruck by Tom Nolan originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 2, 2011]

Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond, the series character created by British author Peter Lovesey 20 years ago, may not much resemble the rugby player he once was—the belly bulging over his belt sees to that—but he still knows how to bull his way through a workplace scrum. Though he is sensitive about his appearance, you wouldn’t know it from the way he strides “in warlike mode” through his police department in Bath, England, where the other coppers know not to argue with him when he has his “arms folded and jaw jutting in Churchillian defiance.”

Diamond, who has become a widower in the course of the series, is an old-fashioned policeman: impatient with forensic delays, hostile to computers, less than fanatical about the proper handling of evidence. He even quit the force once because he was unable to adapt to change; he was lured back but remained determinedly uninterested in learning new tricks. He knew that he was “no Sherlock Holmes,” but “his self-respect as a detective wouldn’t let him walk away” from a vexing case.

In “Stagestruck” (Soho, 325 pages, $25), the 11th book in the series, the puzzling events in Diamond’s latest investigation begin with the facial burns suffered by a fading pop singer in the first moments of her debut as an actress, on the stage of Bath’s Theatre Royal. A makeup mishap appears to be the cause—but seemingly no crime is involved. Then one of the theater’s crew is found dead backstage, and the case becomes a priority.

Peter Lovesey, Wall Street Journal

It proves a challenging assignment for Diamond: The gruff detective has suffered a lifelong, inexplicable fear of being inside theaters. The phobia began in childhood, but he hasn’t a clue what caused it. His female boss suggests that he see a psychiatrist (“This is in danger of becoming an obsession”); but the investigator takes a more direct approach, tracking down an old teacher who may be able to shine light on a long-ago trauma.

The book’s title thus serves double-duty: Diamond is struck with panic before the proscenium, while victims are struck by real violence backstage.

Mr. Lovesey’s narrative is swift, but he takes time out for local color and abundant humor, the latter springing from the book’s quirky characters, including the matriarch who opens her estate for charity functions (“They come from miles around for a slice of my famous lemon drizzle cake”) and the Gilbert-and-Sullivan-quoting patrolman whose verbal gymnastics—”Permit me to introduce Constable Reed. Reed can write at speed, so Reed is needed. Oh, yes, there is a need for Reed”—drive Diamond to distraction.

The most engaging character, of course, is Diamond himself: always driving slowly “at his usual steady 40” but quick with judgments. He warns a patrolman: “You’ll soon learn that I’m not easy to work for. Whatever you do, it’s wrong.” But a female friend tells him: “I quite enjoy your grouchy moments. You can be amusing and curmudgeonly at the same time.”

Mr. Lovesey is a wizard at mixing character-driven comedy with realistic-to-grim suspense. And in a writing career spanning four decades, he has created a stylish and varied body of work that includes—in addition to nearly a dozen Peter Diamond titles—eight Victorian thrillers with Sergeant Cribb in charge; three Edwardian comedies of manners and mystery; a Hollywood silent-movie-era caper; a 1920s ocean-liner adventure; two novels of life in the English country and city in the 1940s; and four volumes of short stories. Mr. Lovesey’s sports novel, “Goldengirl” (1977)—published under the pseudonym Peter Lear—was made into a movie, and dramatizations of his Sergeant Cribb series were seen in the U.S. on PBS’s “Mystery!” series in the early 1980s.

The first Cribb thriller, “Wobble to Death,” marked Mr. Lovesey’s fiction debut in 1970 and is still a good introduction to the author’s work. Mr. Lovesey, a former English teacher, wrote the book hoping to win a £1,000 fiction-writing prize (he did). The title derives from the name—”wobbles”—given to six-day walking competitions that were held in Britain in the 1880s. The fatal poisoning of a “champion pedestrian” during such an event introduced readers to Sergeant Cribb—40ish, not eccentric but with a sense of humor all his own—and his diligent assistant, Constable Thackeray.

Maybe the best of Mr. Lovesey’s stand-alone books is “The False Inspector Dew” (1982), a tale set in 1921 mostly aboard the ocean liner Mauretania. A henpecked dentist and his girlfriend (who reads too many romances) have booked passage under assumed names, intent on murdering his wife. The complications and coincidences that ensue among a large ensemble cast range from the bizarre to the hilarious, as if in a film directed in alternate sequences by Alfred Hitchcock and Preston Sturges.

That Mr. Lovesey would make a midcareer transition from period fiction to contemporary police investigations is just as surprising as one of the sudden mood shifts in any of his idiosyncratic works—and just as satisfying.

Sara Paretsky on Peter Lovesey

SARA PARETSKY created female private eye V.I.Warshawski in 1982, changed the face of crime writing and became an inspiration to women (and some men) writers. She was the founder of Sisters in Crime and is the new Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

I have been a Peter Lovesey fan since first reading his Sergeant Cribb novels, but my favorite of Lovesey’s characters has always been Peter Diamond, the irascible, technophobic deputy superintendent with the Bath and Avon police. In Stagestruck, the newest Peter Diamond mystery, Bath’s Theatre Royal is the beautifully realized setting for a mystery as intricate as the backstage wings, flies, and dressing rooms of the theater itself.

For writers, the theater has always been a perfect breeding ground for murder. Perhaps because plays strip away the gloss we put on top of ambition or jealousy or even love, actors, directors—and wardrobe mistresses—also give way to intense emotions behind the scenes.

In Stagestruck, a fading pop star takes a leading role in a play at the Theatre Royal. Minutes into opening night, something in her make- up badly burns her face. Suspicion falls on the assistant wardrobe mistress who helped with her make up, but as is always true with Lovesey, things are never what they seem. When the assistant herself is found dead, an apparent suicide, Diamond is pressured to end the investigation. Readers know it was murder, and finally, Diamond’s boss—a wonderful study of a bureaucrat in action—is forced to agree with us, and with the superintendent.

Lovesey is a master of the crime novel. The regulars on Diamond’s team—Ingeborg, Keith Halliwell, the unimaginative John Leamann—are vivid characters in their own right. The dynamic among them, and between them and Diamond himself, is what brings the reader back, as much as Lovesey’s masterful plotting. Lovesey has perfected what I call “the hand is quicker than the eye” school of crime writing. Nothing is concealed from the reader, and we learn the truth along with Diamond, but we also are deceived, like Diamond, through a series of plausible miscues until the awful truth is finally revealed.

As is true of everything Lovesey writes, the history and descriptions of place are not just impeccable, but also are woven so seamlessly into the story that you absorb them along with the mystery and the characters.

I’m jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time—you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book.

Sue Grafton In Conversation With Peter Lovesey

SUE GRAFTON’s books sell in millions across the world. Her alphabetically themed series is one of the most courageous and far-sighted writing projects ever attempted by a mystery writer, running already from A IS FOR ALIBI to V IS FOR VENDETTA.

SG: I’ve sampled three of your series: Peter Diamond, CID Inspector Hen Mallin and the Sergeant Cribb/Constable Thackeray novels.

How do you decide which you’ll tackle next? Do you sort out the project according to the nature of the story? I can imagine, for instance, that a plotline suitable for Sergeant Cribb would be entirely different from one you’d flesh out for Peter Diamond.

Give us some insight, please.

PL: You’re so right about the differences in plotting. The Cribb books all began with a theme based on a Victorian entertainment: marathon walking, prize-fighting, the music hall, the river, the waxworks and so on. In the Diamond and Mallin series, the setting of Bath or Chichester is a given, so I like to work more with character, finding strong challenges for my detective and his team. The plotting has to be stronger, too, to match their personal struggles. In the new one, STAGESTRUCK, Diamond must resolve a deep-seated fear of being inside a theatre before he can tackle the murder mystery in Bath’s Theatre Royal. The Cribb series ran its joyful length in books and TV scripts and I can’t see myself getting back to it. Diamond and Hen Mallin are of our time and I want that extra complexity.

SG: Since I only have the one series, I can’t afford to sell the film or television rights. In this country, a producer buys the rights to the character, not the book itself, which gives him the right to do anything he pleases. When Lawrence Block sold the rights to his Bernie Rodenbarr series … the role of Bernie … a white, male Jewish burglar…was given to Whoopee Goldberg. So, of course, I worry that the part of Kinsey Millhone would go to Eddie Murphy. Please believe me, even when I get to “Z” I won’t sell the rights. I’ve made my children and grandchildren take a blood oath to that effect. I’ve sworn if they ever go up against my wishes in that regard, I’ll come back from the grave. They know I can do it, too!

I’ve also read one of your stand-alone crime novels, ROUGH CIDER. Do you prefer the one-offs or the series? Again, are some stories better showcased in one form or the other?

PL: Yes, occasionally it’s like taking a holiday to write a non-series book. My readers seem willing to enjoy the break, too. I wrote one called THE REAPER, about an engaging young vicar called Otis Joy who murders the bishop in chapter one, and of all the books it’s the one best loved. What does that say about me and my readers? But, as you suggest, some story ideas will work only in a single book. I wonder if you have some one-offs in store for us after ‘Z’ IS FOR ….. and of course after a well earned break.

SG: The one-off might be me. I’ll be close to 80 when I get to ‘Z’ IS FOR ZERO so we’ll see how much juice I have left. I don’t want to be one of those writers who goes on and on when readers are crying ‘Enough already!’ I focus on the book I’m writing at the moment. Ideas that don’t seem to be part of the series, I make note of, but I don’t devote any energy to them. If I felt I absolutely had to take a break and write a stand-alone, I’d do it, but for the moment, I’m happy where I am.
Like every other reader, I’m curious about your work habits. What time of day do you write? Where? How many hours a day? I’m also interested in how long it takes you to write a book. Please fill me in.

PL: Ever since I made writing my career I’ve tried to treat it as the day job, starting in the morning and working through till about six. I’ll take shopping breaks and so on, and sometimes time off can be productive. For me, getting words on the screen is a slow process. I average about 300 a day, but as I don’t work in drafts, each of those words must count, so I take care over them. When you add it all up, 300 a day should get the book finished in a year. These days it takes a little longer. Where? In my office in the garden. I call it my shed, but my wife Jax points out that it’s double-glazed, carpeted and heated, so it’s a cut above the average potting shed. I wouldn’t like you to see the clutter inside, though. You once allowed me to see inside your immaculate office (readers can glimpse it on your website) and I was stunned, not to say mortified. In that respect, you and the well-organized Kinsey seem at one.

SG: We recently moved and I vowed…VOWED…to get completely organized. The immaculate office you saw seldom remained immaculate for long. Drawers and cupboards were a mess. I always thought I’d be much happier in tidy surroundings, inside and out. In preparation for the move, I redid 455 research files in color coordinared folders, segregated according to whether the contents were personal, book related, or writing related (as in lectures, articles, etc.) This office looks much better than my former office and I make a point of straightening up at the end of each work day. And you know what? I am happier. As for my work habits, I’m much like you. I consider this my job so I’m in my office by 8:30 every morning and wrap up at 3:00 or so when I take a four mile walk. I work 7 days a week unless I’m sick, out of town or have house guests. I try to write two pages a day, but often I write more. Just as often I write less. I’m slow but I’m persistent. I’m a tortoise, not a hare. You seem to be the same.
What are you currently working on and where are you in the process? Planning stage, book underway, halfway home?

PL: I always need to be involved at some stage in the process and I’m happy to report as I write this that I have only about forty pages left to type. In my scale of output, that’s about five weeks. And where are you with the latest? I imagine you’ve long since decided what the remaining titles will be. I did wonder if you lost any sleep trying to think of a word beginning with X.

SG: I finished ‘V’ January 28 and I’m brain dead so it will take a while to recharge my batteries. I haven’t lost any sleep thinking about the title to X because I’m not there yet. I have a book out every two years so I’m safe for a while. My hope is that between now and the time I write X, someone will come up with a brand new crime that starts with X and I can use that as a jumping off point. No clue what W and Y will be. Z as we know is for Zero. Today, I literally sat down with a dictionary and made a list of all the W words that appealed to me. Then I fell back exhausted. So taxing, this alphabet business!
You did a book tour in the States some years ago, in the company of Liza Cody and Michael Lewin. The library event I attended was lively and amusing. Any plans to do another road trip?

PL: I believe we were among the first mystery writers – together with Paula Gosling – to get a roadshow touring Britain and the US. We continued to tour in various combinations of twos and threes for several years and we remain on speaking terms. As well as readings, we did skits, radio scripts with sound effects and even juggling. My juggling with five objects behind my back has to be seen to be believed. Far easier than devising a good plot. But we now do our own thing and I’ll tour the US bookstores again this summer. Thanks, Sue, for your encouragement and for being an inspiration to so many of us.

SG: I thought there was a fourth Brit in that road show, but I’d forgotten about Paula. Was she with you when you came to Kentucky? I’m usually out there by myself doing the old dog and pony show. Hard work any way you slice it. Next time I see you, I want a juggling demonstration! I’m quite sure it’s easier than coming up with a workable narrative. You don’t need encouragement, kiddo. You’re doing great!

Stagestruck

A Peter Diamond Mystery

Clarion Calhoun is a fading pop star wanting to launch an acting career. The audiences at her debut at Bath’s Theatre Royal are expecting a dramatic evening, but what they get is beyond their wildest imagination. When Clarion is rushed to hospital with third-degree burns, rumours spread through the theatrical community and beyond. In the best theatrical tradition, the show goes on, but the agony turns to murder.

The case falls to Peter Diamond, Bath’s top detective, but for reasons he can’t understand, he suffers a physical reaction amounting to phobia each time he goes near the theatre. As he tries to find its root in his past, the tension at the Theatre Royal mounts, legends come to life and the killer strikes again.

UK Publisher: Sphere 2011 ISBN: 978-1-84744-444-8
US Publisher: Soho Press 2011 ISBN: 978-1-569479476

STAGESTRUCK was picked by the Daily Mail of 16 December as its top-rated Classic Whodunit of 2011. Barry Turner wrote: “May I be forgiven for describing Peter Lovesey as an old pro? It is truly meant as a compliment. With his ever-fresh reworking of the classic formula he never fails to intrigue and mystify. Stagestruck is one of his best.”

STAGESTRUCK was also picked for the New York Times Notable Books of 2011 by Marilyn Stasio, who praised it as a “civilized British detective story.”

Tom Nolan in the Wall Street Journal:

“Master of Moods, From Comic to Grim … In Stagestruck, the 11th book in the series, the puzzling events in Diamond’s latest investigation begin with the facial burns suffered by a fading pop singer in the first moments of her debut as an actress … It proves a challenging assignment for Diamond. The gruff detective has suffered a lifelong, inexplicable fear of being inside theatres. The phobia began in childhood, but he hasn’t a clue what caused it. His female boss suggests that he sees a psychiatrist (‘This is in danger of becoming an obsession’); but the investigator takes a more direct approach, tracking down an old teacher who may be able to shine light on a long-ago trauma… Mr Lovesey is a wizard at mixing character-driven comedy with realistic-to-grim suspense.”

Marilyn Stasio in the New York Times:

“A brilliantly conceived and smartly executed mystery set in the hallowed Theater Royal of Bath … As always, the plot’s the thing with Lovesey, and the solution to the mystery of Clarion’s disfigurement, while arrived at fair and square, is stunning. But the story also has genuine depth and dimension. Working from the droll premise that most of us are stage-struck hams at heart, Lovesey rolls out satirical character sketches of a flamboyant copper who ‘makes a song and dance out of everything,’ an aristocratic trustee who stages amateur shows on the lawn of his stately home, and Diamond’s own superior officer, anxious about her debut in her opera society’s production of ‘SweeneyTodd.’ The only person immune to the allure of the stage is Diamond, whose revulsion for all things theatrical is another minor but intriguing puzzle to be solved before the lights can go up on this dark mystery and the show can finally go on.”

Publishers Weekly in its starred review wrote:

“At the start of Lovesey’s superb 11th mystery featuring Det. Supt. Peter Diamond, pop singer-turned-actress Clarion Calhoun collapses on stage at Bath’s Theater Royal … After the clever reveal of the main criminal, many readers will go back to the beginning to see how artfully a main clue was planted. Once again, Lovesey proves he has few peers as a crafter of contemporary fair-play whodunits.”