The Last Detective - Peter Lovesey

A woman's body has been found floating in a large reservoir just south of Bristol. In order to solve the mystery of the "Lady in the Lake," Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must locate two missing letters attributed to Jane Austen and defy his superiors on the force to save a woman unjustly accused of murder. This is the first of the Peter Diamond series; it won the 1992 Anthony Boucher Award for Best Mystery Novel.

Peter Lovesey is the author of more than thirty highly praised mystery novels. He has been awarded the CWA Gold and Silver Daggers, the Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, theStrand MagazineAward for Lifetime Achievement, the Macavity, Barry, and Anthony Awards, and many other honors. He lives in West Sussex, England.

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

"These erudite and wondrously witty books are unlike any police procedural you've ever read."
-The New York Times Book Review

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

"Witty…. A perfectly realized murder mystery."
-Wall Street Journal

"Extremely stylish, lighter than air ... utterly surprising."
-Newsweek

"Lovesey's books are so beautifully constructed and cleanly written that they could be used as textbooks in a crime writing course."
-Chicago Tribune