Thu 25 Mar 2021
PETER LOVESEY – The Summons. Peter Diamond #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996. Published first in the UK by Little Brown, hardcover, 1995.
I thought the first Peter Diamond book [Last Detective, 1991] was pretty good, but the second one [Diamond Solitaire, 1992] offended me mortally with one of the most stupid and unrealistic plots I’d come across in a decade or so. Which Lovesey / Diamond do we get here?
Ex-Superintendent Peter Diamond of the CID (he resigned in a huff in the first book in the series) is called back to his old headquarters when a prisoner he helped put away escapes and kidnaps the daughter of a police official, The escapee has staunchly maintained his innocence all along and still does, and his price for freeing the girl is for Diamond to find the real killer.
Diamond is far from convinced that he made a mistake, but feels he has little choice but to look into it. He and Detective Inspector Julie Hargreaves embark on a time-deadly search for buried answers several years old.
I’m happy to say that this is the Peter Lovesey that I’ve enjoyed over the years, and not the one who wrote the unintentional farce published as Diamond Solitaire. He has created a vivid character in ex-Superintendent Peter Diamond, neither faceless nor (in this book, at least) larger than life. It is also an excellent detective story, with tracking down and talking to. Lovesey has a real knack for character and dialog, and tells a good story.
I’m not sure things could have worked out quite as neatly for Diamond as they did, but it didn’t require me to suspend more disbelief than I could endure.
March 25th, 2021 at 9:56 pm
I thought perhaps I was the only one who has found Peter Lovesey’s work rather uneven over the years, even within the same series. It’s good to see that Barry agreed with me, that I haven’t always been the only one.
I think, though, that in Lovesey’s case, he’s always trying new approaches to how to tell a mystery. And not always succeeding, but it’s better than staying with the same comfortable formula [rut] all the time.
March 25th, 2021 at 11:24 pm
I can’t suspend disbelief on this one lone point I see mentioned above. He ‘left in a huff’. What Metropolitan superintendent would give up his savings, guaranteed pension, and lifetime medical bennies for private practice?
March 26th, 2021 at 8:20 am
Quite so. OTOH I have known some colleagues with brilliant minds who have done some very stupid things, career-wise. So … maybe.
March 26th, 2021 at 8:27 pm
Diamond is at times annoyingly human to the point without quite realizing it I suspect any regular reader wants to throttle him for his at times dunderheaded choices, but in Lovesey’s hands it mostly means he is one of the most readable of series characters that you keep coming back to even if you feel like throwing a book or two here and there across the room in frustration at his difficult personality.