The Last Detective

Peter Diamond is a police detective of the old school. Hard work, keen eyes and flexibility of the mind are what solve murders in his book. Newfangled science and electronics are simply toys that distract. He is up against it with this murder though, and his reputation is on the rocks as he is under investigation for a previous case for using force to get a confession. Published in 1991, it is a book of its time in that Diamond grumbles about technology taking the place of brains. Desk computers, microwaves, pocket calculators! Oh my! Almost thirty years down the road it seems quite dated in that sense. I feel old.

This was refreshing, a mystery which kept me in the dark until the end! I certainly had suspected the culprit, but was led show more away by red herrings and an intense desire for it to be a certain other character I had little liking for. The only thing this was missing for me, was a counterpart for the detective with good repartee. Still, I would rather that element be missing than poorly done. The main character, while not lovable, was interesting. The story was very well done; kept me reading past my bedtime, which is rare these days. show less

Although I was disappointed that Lovesey had abandoned his glorious Cribb series, I was delighted by this contemporary story of a traditional twentieth century detective out of step with modern policing methods. The use of three narrative voices is intriguing and the sinuous plot achieved complexity without straining credulity.

From the opening pages when a nude woman is found floating in a reservoir to the concluding chapters covering the trial of the suspect, I thought this mystery was well paced and the characters thoroughly developed. The city of Bath was also a character in its own right. Though I was only there once a very long time ago, the scenes in the Roman bath, at the weir by Pulteney Bridge, and the Georgian shopping colonnade were vivid. Add a curmudgeonly policeman (clearly framed as an anti-Morse, but still bearing some kinship to Dexter's character) and two missing Jane Austen letters to really attract readers of a certain type (which, I should be clear, includes me).

Elements of the plot and especially social attitudes feel outdated but not show more enough to put me off. It is from 30 years ago, after all. I'll probably eventually follow up with some of the other Peter Diamond books. I had never heard of these books until I found this at a used bookstore recently, but it looks like the series is still going! show less

Troubling narrative. We're meant to believe, because we're told outright, that Diamond is the last of an old breed who use their intelligence, hard work, and superior deductive reasoning instead of those lazy newfangled computers. And then we hear immediately of the only other relevant case in his history, wherein he helped convict the wrong man, an obvious fall guy. He's accused of helping to send an innocent black man to prison, and it's shrugged off as 'of course not.' Now, some of this resolves, it's not the main story, and there are some enjoyable bits, but this underlying sense of believing the 'good cop' regardless of how he treats people and what he does wrong, just really festers.

The detective of the title, Peter Diamond, is one of the last of the old-school detectives who are known to be scornful of modern methods. The story alternates between Diamond's story and the account of Greg Jackman, a university professor in Bath who has been assigned the job of holding a Jane Austen exhibition. When his beautiful, famous wife is found dead the investigation misses some essential information - not that it would have been caught by the police computer records anyway. The mother of a boy Jackman rescued from the river becomes the prime suspect. I really enjoyed this old-style mystery. It has plenty of intrigue, excellent characters and the Jane Austen sub-plot gave the story added interest.

When the naked body of a woman is found floating in a lake near Bath, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has his work cut out for him: there is no indication of how she died, no identification and no tiny piece of evidence that might even point him in a direction to investigate. Luckily for him, eventually a man comes forward to report his wife missing and once the woman’s identity is established, Diamond can turn his investigative skills to finding the killer. Of course his thoughts first turn to the husband, and then to his associates and to her friends, but the more he learns, the more possible motives and suspects he finds…. This is the first of the long-running Peter Diamond series, and I’m pleased to have discovered it, show more albeit some 35 years after its first publication! I like the main character’s dogged obsession with odds and ends that just don’t add up for him, but I do find one caveat at least in this first book: we are told that Diamond is married, but there are barely any scenes with his wife and she seems completely left out when he has a serious hospitalization in the course of his work. This just struck me as weird; we’ll see if this situation continues in the next books. Recommended, generally speaking. show less

I was recommended this series and quite liked this first entry. The setting was interesting - I know (or know about) Bath slightly, but I didn't take to Peter Diamond, although I did more as the book went on. For me the main problem was that it is dated - it was first published in 1991 and the attitudes and methods are of that time. Technology, used in our daily lives, has advanced/changed so much in the time since then and the main protagonist's resistance to its increased use almost makes it like science fiction whose prophecies have been shown to be wrong!