Skeleton Hill

Longing for a traditional British mystery? Skeleton Hill is just that with two dead bodies, a smattering of clues, plenty of suspects, and a red herring or two thrown in for good measure.

It begins on Bath's Lansdown Hill with the Roundheads and Cavaliers clashing at an reenactment of a Civil War battle fought in 1643. Two of the "corpses" retreat behind the lines to reclaim an earlier secreted six-pack when they dig up a human femur instead. Figuring it's an ancient bone and probably from the original battle they rebury it and go their separate ways. Unfortunately they didn't bury it deep enough and once it resurfaces it ends up on Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond's desk. The femur isn't that old and two weeks later there is a show more fresh corpse on Lansdown Hill, coincidence? Diamond is determined to find out and to run both investigations his way. His boss has other ideas.

The case is built carefully step by step in this Police Procedural allowing the reader a chance to beat the team to a result. Too bad there's no hope of sharing the celebratory beer. A very satisfying contemporary mystery with a glimpse into Bath's ancient past. Plus everyone loves Peter Diamond. He messes up just enough to make him irresistible. show less

Skeleton Hill is book 10 in the Inspector Peter Diamond series, but I don't believe I've read any of the others.

Two of the persons reenacting the 1643 English Civil War battle of Lansdown Hill find a skeleton while looking for something else. They assume it's the body of a soldier who fell in the real battle. One of them, Rupert, is a lecturer in history from Bristol. He goes missing. The skeleton is rediscovered and turns out not to be what Rupert and Dave thought.

Inspector Diamond believes the two cases are connected, but his boss, Georgina, does not. She wants Bristol to head the Rupert case. Diamond takes over that, leaving his second, Keith, in charge of the skeleton case.

The killer or killers took care to make the skeleton show more unidentifiable. Too bad for them that they didn't remove the clothes. The coincidence there reminds me of the one in Rex Stout's The Mother Hunt. (Inspector Diamond is no Nero Wolfe, but he does figure things out -- eventually.)

Why no one reported the murder victim makes sense once a trip to London establishes who the victim probably was. The members of the Lansdown Society do not prove to be as helpful as Diamond hoped, but they're not useless. I liked the Bristol officers as well as Diamond's usual team.

The book has a sense of humor. At one point Georgina lends Diamond her expensive car. No, he doesn't crash it, but what happens does his bank account no good. There's also drama. The London adventure ends in a trip to a hospital.

There were some things I figured out before our hero, but I had not fixed on whodunit. Simon Prebble is an excellent narrator. show less

A good police procedural set in Bath with a dash of history thrown in. When a human bone is discovered on land used by a group who re-enact Civil War battles between Roundheads and Cavaliers, the group is scrutinized. The case is soon linked to another, more recent murder case and the joint investigation becomes complex. However, Lovesey did an excellent job of keeping all the details clear and easy to follow. The tetchy Peter Diamond is his usual technophobe self, although proud to be able to make a mobile phone call, keying the number with his thumb "just like a teenager". I enjoyed this one a lot.

Lovesey's endearing Inspector Peter Diamond series has been around for awhile, and it is a wonderful police procedural series. Lovesey is a very talented author and his Peter Diamond is such a realistic character that I always eagerly await the next book in the series. This book is about a very cold case with very few clues and a more recent murder that does have clues. Peter is set to determine that these two murders, even though wide apart in time, are connected. This quest takes him into the world of Civil War reenactment, horse racing and simple greed before he can figure out the puzzle. And the book is liberally sprinkled with wit throughout. This book is well worth the time spent reading it. An intelligent, British puzzler.

I wasn't really expecting overly much from this book, so I can't say I was disappointed with what I found. This is a police procedural in the vein of Rebus or Banks, except that Diamond doesn't have quite the same forceful presence or commanding knowledge of music that the former two detectives possess (especially Banks with his music). There's a 20-year-old skeleton and then a more recent corpse, both tied in with a historical site where a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers is re-enacted. It was this angle that intrigued me, but it wasn't really the main focus of the investigation. Diamond's investigation followed a reasonable path, but I felt like the end kind of slipped away from me. Granted, I was reading this on the bus and I show more read fairly quickly, so I could have missed the key "epiphany moment" that prompts Diamond to arrest the person he does. And if the last chapter had not been there I would have been seriously dissatisfied with the final interrogation.

One thing I must comment on is the copious historical background shunted in as dialogue. I haven't read a book with that much expository dialogue in a while and it was very jarring. I'm not sure how much of it was relevant, but I did start skimming those parts. However, I was amused when one of the characters Diamond interviews, a clothing expert, starts going on about these historical garments and she essentially shuts herself up because she can see Diamond is not very interested. Diamond was quite the reader stand-in there.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't police officers supposed to sign nondisclosure agreements or something when they join up? Because if they are, Diamond really violates his with his girlfriend or whatever she is, Paloma. He'll meet up with her in the pub in the evening and then happily disclose tons of details about the case and where they're planning to go for leads and stuff, and here she is cheerfully offering advice and commenting on what they've found. Not exactly the smoothest of moves, Diamond.

That and the somewhat flatness of some of the other characters aside, this was a harmless enough novel to spend a couple of days with on the bus. I don't regret reading it but will not bother seeking out others in the series. show less

Celebrating and re-enacting a battle that took place on Landsdown Hill during the English Civil War over three hundred and fifty years earlier, two of the Royalist dead share a beer and discover a bone they think is probably human. At the end of the day one will get home safely and the other, a university history lecturer, will disappear.

His disappearance is reported to Bath CID. The bone discovered during the battle is re-discovered by three rescue dogs, and is found to belong to a headless corpse. Forensics tells Peter Diamond, Head of Bath CID, that not only are the bones not old, but the skeleton is female, murdered and buried within the last two decades.

Within days there are reports of a vagrant trying to break into cars at the show more Bath racecourse. A few days later he comes to police attention again when he tries to steal food at a market. And then he too is found dead.

SKELETON HILL is a fascinating insight into how evidence can be built up.
There were so many things I enjoyed about this book, it is hard to know where to start. The story is quite plausible. I've always liked the idea of battlefield re-enactments, and the opportunities they provide for crime cover-up are legion.
SKELETON HILL is #10 in the Peter Diamond series,and once again Peter Diamond comes over as very human, very real. He is not above getting his hands dirty. In fact his boss doesn't think he delegates enough. I enjoyed the glimpses of the inter-relationships with his team. He is a good leader and an intuitive detective. In the long run the case is solved through a combination of sheer grunt, meticulous investigation, and lateral thinking. show less

During a re-enactment of the English Civil War on a hill, 2 Cavaliers who were among those downed by the Roundheads snuck off to an old oak tree to sneak in a couple of beers from a six-pack that had been hidden prior to the battle. In the process of searching for additional cans of beer, they find an old bone, which appears to be a femur. They bury it back, thinking it belongs to a skeleton of an actual soldier during the battle and go on their merry way. Wouldn't you know, a dog being walked by his owner finds the disturbed ground and digs around, finds the bone and brings it to his owner, who decides to call the police. As the crime scene team get busy, a headless skeleton is uncovered.

In another part of Bath though, an apparently show more homeless man is found dead on the hill, seemingly having struck his head on a boulder.

Nothing immediately ties these 2 incidents together and the head of CID isn't even convinced that any crimes have taken place at all. However, our unfit and cranky Inspector Peter Diamond, more for want of something meaty to chew on, does manage to find slivers of evidence that the skeleton is not as ancient as everyone had assumed, and that starts his task force on locating the identity of the headless skeleton.

As the identity of the dead man is finally uncovered as a history professor in Bristol, but also someone who participated in the re-enactment, our tenacious Inspector Diamond heads down to Bristol to supervise the local task force there, much to their disgruntlement.

Trying to find clues to these 2 murders stretches even the creativity and imagination of Inspector Diamond and as the 2 task forces reach out for any straw they can find. But through the proverbial haystacks, they do manage to gradually uncover a few meagre clues and at that point, things start trotting along at a fair clip.

What makes this series interesting is not just the well developed characters but all the background descriptions about the setting and historical information pertinent to location and sociology of the times. show less