Customer Reviews

Skeleton Hill: An Inspector Peter Diamond Investigation

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Peter Lovesey has two strong elements going for him with this mystery series: the rich history of Bath and the engaging character of Peter Diamond, his detective superintendent, head of the Bath murder squad.

Peter Diamond is a big man - overweight, unfit, funny and irascible by turns, and totally consumed by his job. A demanding boss, he assumes everybody wants to work as hard as he does. Oddly enough for a man who's often in a rush, he likes to drive slow (even old ladies pass him). He's put off by technology but not above using it. In this book he's painfully learning to use his cell phone.

The focus of the action is Lansdown, a hill near Bath where the Roundheads fought the Cavaliers in 1643. The locals periodically re-enact the battle in historic costumes for enthusiastic audiences. During the latest re-enactment, two Cavaliers sneak off to have a few beers under an ancient fallen oak. Some cans are missing, and digging around in search of them, the men find a human femur. Finally they re-bury it out of respect, assuming it's a combatant killed centuries ago.

But in fact the skeleton is no more than 20 years old - and headless. That gets the police to wondering. And when one of the Cavaliers who found the skeleton is murdered, Peter Diamond suspects that the two deaths must be linked.

There are lots of eccentric characters in the story, and interesting glimpses of the sex trade and the aristocratic horseracing scene. The mystery is solved by putting a hundred bits and pieces of information together from interviews, research, forensics and plain old-fashioned snooping. It's quite absorbing to go through the process with Diamond and his team.

I highly recommend the whole series, as well as this latest book.

"Skeleton Hill" starts with an interesting tie-in to the English Civil War of the 17th Century. At a periodic reenactment of an important battle near the city of Bath, two participants find a human leg bone buried in the same cache as their six pack of Fosters. They assume it belongs to a fallen warrior from the original battle and respectfully rebury it.. Later in the day, one of the re-enacters, a university historian, is drawn back to the burial spot and is attacked as he attempts to disinter the bone. The attack renders the man senseless and sends him wandering with amnesia for the next three weeks. The locals assume he's simply a homeless bum until he is attacked again--this time fatally. Meanwhile, the leg bone in question is rediscovered by a someone's pet hound, and the police eventually determine that it, and the rest of a skeleton (minus head), are far from 17th Century remains. But who is the victim? Why is the skeleton headless? The rest of the story is a long, detailed police procedural that attempts to discover the identity of the skeleton and the murderer of the historian.

OK--so author Peter Lovesey delivers a decent plot and a rather good procedural. Where this story does not succeed so well is when it hits the denouement and the motivation of the killer(s?) becomes paramount. That motivation as laid out by the author is just not plausible enough to be attributed to the kind of person(s) that the killer(s) turn out to be. For me, it was literally a "oh, come on" moment.

Lovesey is a good writer, but this can't be one of his best efforts.

A pair of English Civil War reenactors discovers evidence of a decades old murder buried beneath a fallen tree on Lansdown Hill, site of a famous battle. The skeleton is headless, and some painstaking investigation reveals the victim to be a twenty year old Ukrainian immigrant escaping the sex trafficking trade in London. Two weeks after the exhumation, one of the reenactors is found dead in a Landsdown cemetery, his head bashed in.

What follows is a case lead by old pro Peter Diamond, who insists that the two crimes are connected and doggedly pursues the truth in spite of strong discouragement from his boss. Author Lovesey's pacing and plotting is superb, his characters genuine and likable, including the bad guys. Inspector Diamond has recently lost his wife, and is provided here with material for a budding, if not wildly romantic, new relationship with a smart, sassy woman (close to his own age, even!). Lovesey also makes good use of his settings, evoking a realistic sense of time and place. As in other series fiction, perhaps it's better to read the entries in chronological order, but I haven't done that, and find that Skeleton Hill holds its own as a standalone.

In Lovesey's 10th Inspector Peter Diamond mystery, Diamond investigates a headless skeleton found on Bath's Lansdown Hill during a reenactment of a 1643 battle between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. Soon afterward, a university professor who took part in the reenactment is found murdered nearby. Diamond comes to believe the cases are interrelated, even though the skeleton is 20 years old.

Diamond's investigation takes him to historical sites in Bath, to the area's horseracing scene and to London's seamy world of eastern European sex workers who came to England after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

We don't see much of Peter Diamond's personal life in this particular entrant in the series. It's more of a straightforward police procedural. I thought it was interesting, but not a standout. Still, a medium-grade Lovesey is well above average for most mysteries.

History professor Rupert Hope takes a time-out from his role as a dead Cavalier in an annual reenactment of a 1643 battle with the Roundheads on Lansdown Hill, and unearths a human femur. Excited by the find - certain it's part of a centuries-dead soldier - Hope keeps digging. Until someone stops him.

Shortly after Hope is reported missing, a woman walks into Supt. Peter Diamond's Bath station and turns in a suspiciously human looking bone her dog found. It's that femur, of course, and the skeleton it belongs to is no unknown soldier but a headless woman only a decade or two dead - murdered most likely, judging by her missing skull.

The forensics head and the new public relations officer bear the brunt of Diamond's usual sardonic wit while the murder case and the missing professor bumble along in a teamly mix of missed connections and quick thinking.

In addition to the accustomed tussles between the classes, Lovesey manages to mix in a bit of politics with his crime, when a connection to Eastern Europe exposes refugee sex trafficking closer to home.

As always Diamond's gruff manner, wily thinking and benevolent dictatorship are wholly engaging (imagine the fun: Diamond squared off with Andy Dalziel sometime), while the secondary characters are well developed with small subplots of their own.

Lovesey fans will enjoy this latest reunion with an old friend, but newcomers should start with an earlier volume, as the pace is more leisurely and the outcome less believable than usual.

Having been to Bath the tale made me feel I was there again. Very entertaining with surprising end. I also learnt quite a bit about the history of bath.

Amazon alerted me about this book. I love this author and bought it based on that. I was surprised at the format. It is a small sized hardcover book. The print is a little small for my vision but I can read it. It came when it was supposed to and in perfect condition. Peter Lovesey is a British author writing crime fiction. He is so good that you forget you are reading and feel as if you are in the story. His characters are well developed without exhausting side trips. The stories all take place in and around Bath and since this is the third book of his, I have taken the time to look at Bath online. When I take my book reading break every day I want to be transported to a new place and know what it is like. i want to know how life is lived there. It is my escape from a hardworking life. These books do that. Lovesey presents logical, well thought out stories. When I get done I have to sit and try to imagine how he came up with the plot and the manner in which the story is told. His detective Peter Diamond has flaws but is determined and loves a mystery, so do I. I started with The Bloodhounds of Bath which is a story involving a crime fiction book club and has a good discussion of mysteries, crime fiction as a genre and the relationship between life and writing. My second book was the House Sitter and I loved that but felt it was quite different that the first book. Get these books and start enjoying them. the only problem with any of them (besides the small print in this one) is that they end too soon. I do think about Bath and the characters from time to time and wonder how they are.

Two murders confront Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond in this, the tenth in the mystery series featuring the irascible Bath policeman. Each of the murders apparently took place during re-creations of the battle between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers three-and-one-half centuries ago. The first, which occurred more than a decade before the latest one, was of a female about 20 years old, whose headless skeleton is uncovered by a history lecturer, who is himself later killed.

The two murders seem unrelated, except Diamond's intuition tells him the spectacles on Lansdown Hill in Bath makes them related. Hindered by a lack of clues, the lack of cooperation by his superior, and other obstacles, Diamond has to claw forward, grasping at straws to reach a plausible conclusion.

Written with an eye to Diamond's sense of humor and logical thinking, the novel is plotted carefully to bring the reader forward as Diamond uncovers additional facts and clues. The author includes a significant amount of history and a wonderful appreciation of the Bath countryside.

Recommended.

During a reenactment of the English Civil War battle at Lansdown between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, participant Bristol University Professor Rupert Hope and another "corpse" leave the scene to share a beer or six. While drinking, the pair finds a human femur that they assume was three and half centuries old so should be re-buried.

A bit more sober, Rupert returns to the scene of the burial to dig back up the bone to show off to his students only to be hammered in the head. Soon afterward Inspector Peter Diamond investigates the bone; he and his team find the rest of the remains of an unknown woman except the skull. As Rupert recovers from a concussion, he is killed. Diamond assumes a connection between the skeleton and the academia's murder in which the investigation upsets his boss, high society, and the Bristol CID.

This terrific English police procedural is owned as always by Diamond who blunders and steps on feet while working to solve two homicides that occurred years apart. His theory is to solve one solves the other. Fans will enjoy his misadventures in the Bath region as Peter Lovesey provides his audience with a bit of history, geography, and culture wrapped inside an amusing yet well written investigate tale filled with super twists. Inspector Diamond is 24 carets in his latest inquiry (see THE SECRET HANGMAN).

Harriet Klausner

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.