Sunday, July 10, 2016

New from Peter Lovesey: ANOTHER ONE GOES TONIGHT, British Police Procedural with Mad Twists

What a delight the new Peter Lovesey mystery is! Detective Peter Diamond steps away from the personal issues that have plagued him in recent titles in this irresistible British series, in order to investigate an accident involving a police car, a police fatality, and a critically injured civilian. Under pressure to quickly clear the officers, Diamond is the one who actually finds a motorized tricycle that the duty car had struck -- and then the injured man.
Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of an old person, very likely dead, isn't for the squeamish. The urgency of the situation overrode the reluctance. ... He stooped lower for more mouth-to-mouth. The first instinctive reluctance had gone. He cared, he really cared. Hot lips against cold. Two lungfuls of air. ... He and his mate here were not letting go. There had to be life. Come on, old friend, he urged as he worked his aching shoulders, you and I can do this.
Of course, Diamond's heroics make the situation far worse for the police force, and his superior's pressure escalates. Who is this Ivor Pellegrini that Diamond has found nearly dead, and why does the first cursory investigation of his life -- an old man with a group of friends who get together to talk trains and other topics of the aged -- have such a creepy feel to it?

Lovesey lays out a classic British mystery here, but thanks to the quirks with which he's now endowed both Diamond and the crime victim (and suspects!), ANOTHER ONE GOES TONIGHT is full of lively twists in what we know, what Diamond guesses, and how to prove it. Put this one on the summer reading list for pure enjoyment of the latest work from Lovesey, who has now created more than 30 mystery novels and gathered most of the top awards in the field. If this is your first sample of Lovesey's line, fear not -- there's nothing in the plot that requires you to have read the earlier books.

Be sure to make some guesses of your own about the neighbor's report of the naked man swimming in a pool nearby. Any intriguing distraction provided by this master of the genre has a purpose, a reason, and another quirky twist in store! Many thanks to Soho Crime for continuing to bring this series across the Atlantic.


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