PETER LOVESEY – Upon a Dark Night. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1998. Soho Crime, trade paperback, 2005. First published in the UK by Little Brown, 1997.

   If my count is correct, this is book five in Lovesey’s ongoing Peter Diamond series, with number 12 (including one book of short stories) coming out in June of this year (Stagestruck).

   The good inspector is in good form in Upon a Dark Night. He’s tough on his staff and subordinates, with DI Julie Hargreaves, his closest assistant, taking the brunt of his crude and unruly ways. She in fact is close enough to steer him away from the occasional pitfalls in his logic and reasoning, assistance for which he very nearly says thank you.

   There are two unusual deaths in Bath in Dark Night, after a long stretch of time during which there have not been any, and both come close to being considered suicides, without Diamond’s input. Those plus an amnesia victim’s mysterious disappearance, a young woman whose awakening from an accident and subsequent problems in rediscovering herself — with the able assistance of fellow social services client, the kleptoholic but very observant Ada Shaftsbury — take up the first third of the book.

   Are these events all connected? I won’t say yes, but I won’t say no either. I will say that one must believe in coincidences in reading books like this one, which is not a problem, no, not really. Coincidences happen all the time.

   I’m less forgiving, though, when it comes to stupid behavior on the part of the villains in the case. Lovesey is a fine and very witty writer when it comes to people and their relationships to each other, and the leisurely pace at the beginning of this novel was more than fine with me.

   The rushed and overly active way in which Dark Night concludes, however, I found less satisfying, at least in comparison.