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Combative and curmudgeonly, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has never been a favorite with his fellow cops. However, this head of the Bath, England, murder squad could always count on the loyalty and affection of his wife, Stephanie. Until now. Her broad-daylight shooting in Diamond Dust, the seventh of Peter Lovesey's scrupulously polished Diamond mysteries, has the stout detective sidelined in favor of other investigators less prone to turn the case into a personal vendetta, yet still determined to find a motive for his spouse's slaying. "Throughout their marriage," Diamond muses, "Steph... had never directly benefited from the one skill he had: sleuthing. She was entitled to it now. He would find her killer, and to hell with the problems it raised." So, even as Diamond becomes the prime suspect in this tragedy (the murder weapon was an old revolver he'd secreted in his attic), he pursues more probable perpetrators--including a local gangster clan and Stephanie's ex-husband, a ne'er-do-well chef who might also be connected with an elaborate jewel-theft scheme and the recent disappearance of another cop's wife. Lovesey created two historical series before tackling the Diamond books, and his experience shows here as he carefully weaves together profuse plot threads, while simultaneously (and convincingly) forcing his protagonist's evolution through misfortune. That he succeeds in making the testy-before-his-time Peter Diamond an endearing figure is, alone, credit to Lovesey's authorial aptitude. Diamond Dust fans should hunt up previous installments of this witty series, especially Bloodhounds and The Vault. --J. Kingston Pierce
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