The Last Detective (Deluxe Edition) - (Detective Peter Diamond Mystery) by Peter Lovesey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"I am so excited for you to be at the very beginning of this trend-setting, beautifully written, vivid series."--from the introduction by LOUISE PENNY

The first installment in one of crime fiction's most enjoyable, iconic series--now featuring a rare peek into Diamond's origins and the author's process in bringing him to life.

A woman's body has been found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath. There are no marks on her and no murder weapon. No one will identify her. It looks like Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has his work cut out for him. Diamond is one of the last detectives of his kind, a gumshoe whose heroes solved crimes by question and answer, door stepping and deduction. To unravel this one, Diamond must locate two missing letters attributed to Jane Austen and defy his superiors in order to save a woman unjustly accused of murder.

Over thirty years and twenty-one subsequent novels, Peter Lovesey has bewitched his enormous fandom with the wry, stubborn, and fiendishly clever Peter Diamond. The Last Detective started it all, and it is now reissued in a gorgeous deluxe edition featuring an introduction by Louise Penny, an afterword by the author, and fascinating true-crime context describing how this book came to be.

Review Quotes

Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement Recipient
Mystery Writers of America 2018 Grandmaster

Praise for The Last Detective

"The first volume in Lovesey's beloved Peter Diamond series has a handsome new 20th-anniversary edition."
--Entertainment Weekly

"A bravura performance . . . slyly paced, marbled with surprise and in the end, strangely affecting."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Thickly textured, amusing, unpredictably mixing puzzle and procedural . . . One of the best."
--Los Angeles Times

"A treasure."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"Not only a good story but a compelling one."
--Boston Globe

"Top-form Lovesey."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Witty . . . One surprise after another."
--Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Peter Diamond series

"I'm jealous of everyone discovering Lovesey and Diamond for the first time--you have a wonderful backlist to catch up on. Me, all I can do is wait for the next book."
--Sara Paretsky

"What'll it be today? A knotty puzzle mystery? A fast-paced police procedural? Something more high-toned, with a bit of wit? With the British author Peter Lovesey, there's no need to make those agonizing decisions, because his books have it all."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Mr. Lovesey's narrative is swift, but he takes time out for local color and abundant humor, the latter springing from the book's quirky characters . . . Lovesey is a wizard at mixing character-driven comedy with realistic-to-grim suspense. And in a writing career spanning four decades, he has created a stylish and varied body of work."
--The Wall Street Journal

"Next to Jane Austen, Peter Lovesey is the writer the tourist board of Bath, England, extols most proudly . . . The enduring draw of the Peter Diamond books derives both from the beguiling Bath cityscape and the brusque character of Diamond himself."
--NPR

About the Author

Peter Lovesey (1936-2025) was the author of more than forty highly praised mystery novels, including the Peter Diamond investigations and the Sergeant Cribb investigations. He was honored with the two highest awards in mystery fiction, Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and the Cartier Diamond Dagger of the Crime Writers' Association, as well as many other international accolades. He lived in Shrewsbury, England.