Down Among the Dead Men Lib/E: (15 Peter Diamond Series Lib/E)

In a Sussex town on the south coast of England, a widely disliked art teacher at a posh private girls' school disappears without explanation. None of her students miss her boring lessons, especially since her replacement is a devilishly hunky male teacher with a fancy car. But then her name shows up on a police missing persons list. What happened to Miss Gibbon, and why does no one seem to care? Meanwhile, detective Peter Diamond finds himself in Sussex, much against his wishes. His irritating and often obtuse supervisor, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, has made Diamond accompany her on a Home Office internal investigation. A Sussex detective has been suspended for failing to link DNA evidence of a relative to a seven-year-old murder case-a bad breach of ethics. Diamond is less than thrilled to be heading out on a road trip with his boss to investigate a fellow officer, but he becomes much more interested in the case when he realizes who the suspended officer is-an old friend, and not a person he knows to make mistakes. As Diamond asks questions, he begins to notice unsettling connections between the cold case and the missing art teacher. Could the two mysteries be connected? How many other area disappearances have gone unnoticed and uninvestigated? Diamond and his hapless supervisor have stumbled into a web of related crimes. Will Diamond be able to disentangle them?

About the Author :
Peter Lovesey (1936-2025) wrote more than thirty highly praised mystery novels, including the Peter Diamond mysteries, the Sergeant Cribb historical mysteries, and the Bertie Prince of Wales novels. His book have won the British Crime Writers' Association Silver and Gold Dagger awards, the Cartier Diamond Dagger, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, the Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, and the Strand Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award. In the United States, his books won an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award, and the Ellery Queen Readers Award, among others. He was named a Grand Master of the Swedish Academy of Detection and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. Simon Prebble, a British-born performer, is a stage and television actor and veteran narrator of some three hundred audiobooks. As one of AudioFile's Golden Voices, he has received thirty-seven Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie in 2010. He lives in New York.

Review :

"Dallymore and Diamond illustrate that good cops and intriguing mysteries can go together. Ideal for those who prefer cerebral rather than graphic whodunits."

"Diamond is a wonderfully rounded character whose lines are witty and whose observations about people's characters and motives are brilliantly insightful. Vintage Diamond mystery, spiced by his comic encounters with his supervisor: a must for devotees of character-driven British crime fiction."

"Engaging prose, intriguing and credible plot, and believable characters with a likable lead. In Down among the Dead Men, Lovesey delivers a fine read."

"Lovesey is a masterful plotter, and that alone would earn him praise and fans, but his characters are memorable, and Diamond is a glittering gem among them. In addition to those strengths Lovesey adds wit, humor, and finely structured prose."

"Lovesey not only spins a satisfying whodunit--there's a contemporary case as a subplot, too--but continues to develop the complicated, intriguing relationship between Diamond and his boss."

"Simon Prebble is always fun, and never more so than here, as crusty Detective Peter Diamond...The plot is suitably baroque, always two steps ahead of you, but the real fun is in Prebble's subtlety as a performer. He's a master of accents; with the slightest inflection he gives you class, age, sex, education, ethnicity, and personality, a Rembrandt of vocal portraiture. Lovesey is at the top of his game, and Simon Prebble is his perfect audio counterpart. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."

"This is the kind of clever, densely packed puzzle we don't see much of these days. It's engrossing, well written, and original."

"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."