The Vault [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Peter Lovesey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001

A mystery featuring the irascible detective Peter Diamond, a 20-year-old murder, and the missing diaries of Mary Shelley. Skeletal remains are found in a cellar below Bath's Georgian tearooms, and Diamond is delighted to learn that not all of them are centuries old.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Curmudgeonly Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond (The Last Detective, Bloodhounds, The Summons) is once again suffering fools (to which category he currently consigns Americans, antiques enthusiasts, and his immediate superiors) none too gladly. When a skeletal hand is found in the cellar of the abbey churchyard in Bath, Diamond is inclined to write the apparent crime off as the dusty wages of a long-forgotten sin. But then a skull turns up. And then Joe Dougan, mild-mannered American professor and avid literary tourist, unearths the startling fact that in the early 19th century that cellar belonged to the home Mary Shelley lived in as she was writing Frankenstein. Glorious fodder for the sensationally minded press and a monstrous headache for Diamond, who would prefer to cogitate upon the mystery in peace and quiet.

But it seems that the literary connection is as crucial as it is sensational. When Dougan's wife disappears and Peg Redbird, proprietress of the Noble and Nude antiques store, turns up dead after a heated conversation with the professor (in hot pursuit of Shelley's writing desk and sketchbook), Diamond has to wonder whether a thirst for knowledge also implies a thirst for blood. As Diamond immerses himself in Bath's cultural history, however, more and more suspects pop up, linking the long-dead bones in the cellar to Peg's very recent corpse. Author Peter Lovesey, with a nod and wink toward the conventions of traditional British mystery fiction, paints his characters with broad strokes: like the characters in a game of Clue, the suspects are easily labeled. Is it the spoiled heir who dunnit? What about the up-and-coming reporter? Or the cryptic puppeteer? Or (and this is really giving Diamond ulcers) the suave city councilor, who happens to be good friends with Diamond's boss? Lovesey tiptoes agilely just this side of caricature--and has a great deal of fun doing so.

Diamond himself is an enjoyable enough character, though his grouchiness seems to be missing some of the verve it had in earlier books. One might take issue with the novel's sense of pacing (at times funereal), and with Lovesey's narrative gimmick of switching occasionally to the murderer's perspective (too Gothic a trick for a relatively unexciting plot). These complaints, however, don't detract from an otherwise solid entry in the Superintendent Diamond series. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Set in 1990s Bath, England (to call the setting modern-day would be misleading, given the moldy ambiance), Lovesey's latest police proceduralDfeaturing his best-known "copper," the oversized and grumpy Peter DiamondDdeftly blends Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, William Blake and '60's hard-rock music. (At one point Diamond drives down the highway lustily singing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust.") This story of severed appendages and missing heads moves from the subterranean crypt where Ms. Shelley's pen brought her monster alive, to Peg Redbird's shady antique business, Noble and Nude, and eventually to a pub calledDwith typical Lovesey humorDthe Brains Surgery. American literature professor Joe Dougan and his twittery wife, Donna, arrive in Bath to explore bookstores and boutiques, when corpses begin to litter the landscape. Danger besets them in the form of an attacker who likes to bludgeon his victims and fantasizes himself to be Shelley's monster. Then Donna disappears. As always with this Golden Dagger Award-winning author, the story crackles with wit and urbanity, snappy dialogue and deeper, fouler doings whispering from the wings. Diamond and his put-upon sidekicks, Leaman and Halliwell, chase a madman whose musings tantalize at intervals, while Dougan searches desperately for his absent spouse. This is a stunning tale of the macabre and the mundane.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786230630
• ISBN-13: 978-0786230631
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,430,307 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PETER LOVESEY is the author of the Peter Diamond mysteries, well known for their use of surprise, strong characters and hard-to-crack puzzles. He was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2000, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, the Anthony, the Ellery Queen Readers' Award and is Grand Master of the Swedish Academy of Detection. He has been a full-time author since 1975, and was formerly in further education. Earlier series include the Sergeant Cribb mysteries seen on TV and the Bertie, Prince of Wales novels. The Diamond novels, set in Bath, England, where Peter lived for some years, feature a burly, warm-hearted, but no-nonsense police detective whose personal life becomes as engaging to the reader as the intricate mysteries he solves. His team in Bath CID includes the ex-journo Ingeborg Smith, the long-serving Keith Halliwell and the meticulous John Leaman, all involved in what is essentially a fair-play procedural mystery series. Peter and his wife Jax, who co-scripted the TV series, have a son, Phil, also a teacher and mystery writer, and a daughter Kathy, who was a Vice-President of J.P.Morgan-Chase, and now lives with her family in Greenwich, Ct. Peter currently lives in Chichester, England. His website at www.peterlovesey.com gives fuller details of his life and books. "Try him. You'll love him," wrote the doyen of the mystery world, Otto Penzler, in the New York Sun.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sharp wit and a cantankerous detective make this a winner, October 22, 2000

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Vault (Hardcover)

A witty, irascible detective, an intricate plot and the touristy, historical and literary setting of Bath, England, add up to another crackling, well-written entertainment in Peter Lovesey's fifth Peter Diamond mystery.

When renovations in the old vault under the less-old Pump Room turn up a too-modern skeleton of a hand, Diamond, head of Bath's murder squad, takes tea with the paying visitors while underlings sift rubble for further remains. But a new female chief with a bent for community relations and a nosy reporter with ambitions to detect soon complicate his straightforward investigation. Then a pesky American professor, hot on the trail of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," energetically re-educating Bathians about their city, stumbles into Diamond's purview when a disappearance and a fresh corpse bring this hilarious subplot to the forefront.

With his preference for old-fashioned methods, his acerbic, ready wit and his low tolerance for fools and bores, Diamond drives Lovesey's narrative rather more easily than he steers a case burgeoning with schemers, haughty collectors and red herrings. Plot twists and complications keep the reader guessing but it's Diamond's big presence and dominant personality that makes this series ("The Last Detective," "The Summons"), from the award-winning author of the Victorian Sergeant Cribb series ("Wobble to Death" "Abracadaver"), a standout.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lovesey special, October 25, 2000

By 

Rudy Arnold "RArnold" (Amery, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Vault (Hardcover)

This is not a shoot'm up in the American style. It's a classic slow leisurely British who-done-it. Mr. Lovesey has a distinctive airy prose style that requires some investment on the part of the reader. Unfortunatly, this investment was not rewarded in the earlier novels in this series. The later novels (the last two in particular) have been much better. Mr. Lovesey seems to have realized that the frenzied plot gimmicks so dear to American writers aren't going to work for him (although he STILL reverts occasionally).

Mr. Lovesey has a remarkable knack for the slow and simultaneous development of seemingly unrelated plots and sub-plots, charactors and sub-charactors. You wonder how they can possibly be related, how they can all be brought together and make sense. A Lovesey denouement can be almost as long as the development; as he slowly unravels his complicated plot. And great fun to boot!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Fine, But Ending Slightly Weak!, July 23, 2005

By 

S. Henkels (Devon, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Vault (Paperback)

For me, just about any Brit mystery/ procedural is worthwhile, and I was not disappointed here. The story's many subplots may not always fit perfectly together, but they add historic and bibliophile interest. When a hand is delivered in a pizza box to the Bath police murder squad, it is determined to be about 15-20 years old, and probably the result of harm done during some excavating and building in an old vault near a cemetary, and also very near the spot where Mary Shelley may have written Frankenstein. An American professor-tourist discovers an old book that may also have belonged to Mrs. Shelley 180 years ago.Meanwhile, some interesting art that may be unknown Blakes also make the rounds. A very readable, interesting, and page-turning plot is woven around this, plus Inspector Diamond's investigations. We meet some eccentric Brits, including a middle ages puppeteer, some greedy antiques dealers, and a severely beaten police officer, plus a body in the nearby river. Though Diamond may not be the jolliest or most lovable detective, there's enough clues and action to keep the serious mystery buff page turning. The solution and ending are not quite up to speed, and a slight disappointment, but still a near top notch modern Brit mystery.