Peter Lovesey

The Detective Wore Silk Drawers

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

For my second novel I stayed with sport as a background, this time bare-knuckle boxing. This form of pugilism was forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, confirmed by a headless body in the Thames whose hands were “pickled” for fighting. A young constable called Henry Jago is chosen to infiltrate the gang and he has to submit to a rigorous programme of purging, pickling and training. Moreover, Cribb needs to intervene at the crucial time to prevent young Jago from being battered to death.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1971
UK Paperback: Panther, 1972
US Publisher: Dodd, Mead, 1971
US Paperback: Dell, 1972
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2018
Latest US paperback: Soho Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-56947-524-9

“The Detective Wore Silk Drawers will establish the Historical Thriller as securely as Mrs Christie established her own particular brand of whodunit.”
Whitefriar, Smith’s Trade News

“A gorgeous piece of period reconstruction … all the details of pickling and purging, gymnastics and ‘coming up to scratch’ worked into an exciting plot.”
Violent Grant, Daily Telegraph

“A splendid thick-ear thriller in the literal sense.”
Matthew Coady, The Guardian

“A rich and unusual mystery, with suspense enough for the most confirmed addict.”
Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

The False Inspector Dew

strong>CWA Gold Dagger Winner, 1982
Listed in Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books
Listed in Hatchards 100 Top Crime Novels
Listed in The Times 100 Best Crime Novels of the Twentieth Century
Dagger of Daggers Shortlist, 2006

It is 1921, and Alma Webster, a reader of romances, is passionately in love with her dentist, Walter Baranov. There is only one foreseeable outcome: the murder of his wife. Inspired by the real-life Dr Crippen case, they plot a way to achieve it perfectly aboard the ocean liner, Mauretania. With a fine sense of irony, Baranov takes the identity of Inspector Dew, Crippen’s nemesis, and then a murder is reported aboard the ship and the complications begin.

UK Publisher: Macmillan, 1982
US Publisher: Pantheon, 1982. Reissued, 1988
UK Paperback: Arrow, 1983
US paperback: Pantheon, 1982
Latest US edition: Soho Press, 2001 ISBN 1-56947-255-6
Latest UK edition: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553574

“An extraordinarily clever, fascinating novel … Compulsively readable.”
Colin Dexter, Best Books, The Week

“Absolutely riveting … I read The False Inspector Dew because I couldn’t resist it and now I wish I’d saved it for the weekend. He’s such a stylish, lucid writer, and wickedly clever as well, with a wonderful knack of springing really astonishing surprises … A masterpiece. I defy anyone to foresee the outcome.”
Ruth Rendell

“The sort of book that ought to be a bestseller and deserves to be.”
HRF Keating, The Times

“Oh, what a lovely crime this is.”
Jean M White, Washington Post Book World

“Brilliant … stunning.”
Andrew Hope, Evening Standard

“One of the cleverest crime comedies of the past few years.”
Julian Symons, Bloody Murder

“Impossible to put down … We dare you not to smile and smile again as wicked entertainer Lovesey sails through each roll and turn of the transatlantic crossing.”
Kirkus Reviews

“Lovesey’s masterpiece thus far and one of the best mysteries ever written, one that opens up new possibilities for the genre.”
James Hurt, Dictionary of Literary Biography

The House Sitter

A Peter Diamond Mystery, also introducing Hen Mallin

Macavity Award Winner, 2003
Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlist, 2003
Barry Award shortlist, 2003

“If you were planning a murder and wanted a place to carry it out, a beach would do nicely.”

At first everyone presumed that the woman behind the windbreak was asleep. It was only when the tide was coming in, and all but lapping at her feet, that the most horrific of crimes was discovered.

The first that Bath detective Peter Diamond knows about the crime is when the victim is traced back to his city. Soon the murder enquiry becomes a joint investigation with DCI Hen Mallin. The dead woman turns out to have been a top psychologist and forensic profiler. And at the time of her death she was working on a highly classified case for the National Crime Faculty, attempting to crack the identity of a cold and clever serial killer.

UK Publisher: Little, Brown, 2003 ISBN 0-316-72531-5
US Publisher: Soho Press, 2003 ISBN 1-56947-326-9
UK Paperback: Time Warner, 2004 ISBN 0-7515 -3458-7
Latest US Paperback: Soho Press, 2004 ISBN 1-56947-360-9
Latest UK Paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553611

“The writing is as smooth as polished steel, and the small touches that reveal character, especially the memorable Hen, approach genius. This is Lovesey at his best.”
Publishers Weekly

“Brusque Diamond and plain-speaking Mallin make an engaging team, and few, if any, can top Lovesey in not only creating believable red herrings and plot twists but whetting an appetite for reading the English classics from Austen to Coleridge.”
Kirkus Reviews

Peter Lovesey’s The House Sitter is a big book, but the two intriguing puzzles it presents are just right for holiday reading and there’s some entertaining interplay between the author’s regular detective, the irascible Superintendent Peter Diamond, and a feisty woman detective, in whom he has at last met his match.”
Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph

The Last Detective

A Peter Diamond Mystery

Anthony Award Winner

The naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath. No one is willing to identify her. There are no marks and there is no murder weapon – a real test of the sleuthing ability of Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond. He is the last detective, not some lad out of police school with a degree in computer studies, but a genuine gumshoe whose heroes wore trilbies and raincoats and solved crimes by question and answer, doorstepping and deduction.

Challenged by petty office politics, frustrated by obstructive tactics, Diamond strikes out on his own. Despite disastrous personal consequences, the last detective exposes the uncomfortable truth.

UK Publisher: Scribners, 1991
US Publisher: Doubleday, 1991
UK Paperback: Warner Futura, 1992
US Paperback: Bantam, 1992
Latest US Paperback: Soho Press, 2000 ISBN 1-56947-209-2
Latest UK Paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553680

“This is his first crime story with a contemporary setting, and it is a brilliant performance … We shall be lucky if we get a more baffling or entertaining crime puzzle to read this year.”
Julian Symons, Times Literary Supplement

“The master of the Victorian detective novel turns, for the first time, to a modern whodunit; and a terrific job he makes of it.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times

“Mr Lovesey maintains a wonderful tone throughout, pitched somewhere between the ring of truth and the call of the loon … A comedy of bad manners, full of oddball characters and wacky events develops into a perfectly realized murder mystery whose skilful misdirection never oversteps the bounds of fair play.”
Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

” The Last Detective is a bravura performance from a veteran showman: slyly paced, marbled with surprise and, in the end, strangely affecting.”
Josh Rubins, New York Times Book Review

“A marvellous achievement – masterfully plotted and totally absorbing over its entire 330 pages.”
Allen J. Hubin, Deadly Pleasures

The Summons

A Peter Diamond mystery

The Macallan CWA Silver Dagger Winner, 1995
MWA Edgars shortlist, 1995
Critics Choice Awards Selection, 1995

The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once he was head of the murder squad there. These days he is out of touch, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison.

Four years previously, a Swedish woman journalist was murdered in Bath in bizarre circumstances, her mouth stuffed with red roses. The investigation had been headed by Diamond. Now the convicted murderer is at large. Worse, he has kidnapped the daughter of the Assistant Chief Constable. He is demanding that the case be re-examined and he will deal only with Diamond.

UK Publisher: Little, Brown, 1995 ISBN 0-316-91078-3
US Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1995 ISBN 0-89296-551-7
UK Paperback: Warner Books, 1996 ISBN 0-7515-1627-9
US Paperback: Mysterious Press, 1996 ISBN 0-446-40369-5
Latest US paperback: Soho Press, 2004 ISBN 1-56947-360-9
Latest UK paperback: Sphere, 2014 ISBN 978-0751553666

“Diamond is forever. The outcome is a masterly surprise. This is the best of Lovesey’s Diamond novels to date.”
John Coleman, The Sunday Times

“The Summons is a classic.”
The Economist

“Diamond’s adventures get better and better – and this could be the jewel in Lovesey’s crown.”
Yorkshire Post