The spiritualist movement has captivated a segment of society: manifestations, the occult, and “sensitives” are in vogue. But the seance sites seem to be targeted for burglaries. Then, while Cribb is on the case, someone murders the medium.

There was a great vogue for table-turning and getting in touch with the dead in Victorian times and this lent itself to fraud, at the very least. It seemed inevitable that Cribb and Thackeray should take part in a seance at some stage. They come to it indirectly, following an art theft. The owner, Dr Probert, has also been dabbling in the occult. When murder is done, the two detectives find themselves rubbing shoulder with some eccentric suspects, and a rather convincing medium.

“Fine picture of period vice, good mystery plotting, and fun.” –San Francisco Chronicle

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.

Two police officers are about to head home after a long night shift when they receive one last call. En route to investigate, the patrol car spins off the road, killing one of the exhausted cops and leaving the other in critical condition. Detective Peter Diamond is assigned to look into the case. His supervisor is desperately hoping Diamond will not discover the officers were at fault. Instead, Diamond discovers something even worse-a civilian on a motorized tricycle was involved in the crash and has been lying on the side of the road for hours. Diamond administers CPR, but the man’s fate is unclear. Meanwhile, Diamond has become suspicious of the civilian victim and begins a private inquiry that leads to a trail of uninvestigated deaths. As the man lingers on life support, Diamond must wrestle with the fact that he may have saved the life of a serial killer.

In the seventeenth installment in Peter Lovesey’s timeless British detective series, Peter Diamond digs deep into Bath history to ferret out the secrets of one of its most famous (and scandalous) icons: Richard “Beau” Nash, who might have been the victim of a centuries-old murder. Bath, England: A wrecking crew is demolishing a row of townhouses in order to build a grocery store when they uncover a skeleton in one of the attics. The dead man is wearing authentic 1760s garb and on the floor next to it is a white tricorn hat-the ostentatious signature accessory of Beau Nash, one of Bath’s most famous historical men-about-town, a fashion icon and incurable rake who, some say, ended up in a pauper’s grave. Or did the Beau actually end up in a townhouse attic? The Beau Nash Society will be all in a tizzy when the truth is revealed to them. Chief Inspector Peter Diamond, who has been assigned to identify the remains, begins to fantasize about turning Nash scholarship on its ear. But one of his constables is stubbornly insisting the corpse can’t be Nash’s-the non-believer threatens to spoil Diamond’s favorite theory, especially when he offers some pretty irrefutable evidence. Is Diamond on a historical goose chase? Should he actually be investigating a much more modern murder?

A must-listen collection of fifteen bibliomysteries by bestselling and award-winning authors
Bibliomysteries Volume 2 includes:
– “Remaindered” by Peter Lovesey
– “The Compendium of Srem” by F. Paul Wilson
– “The Sequel” by R. L. Stine
– “Mystery, Inc.” by Joyce Carol Oates
– and many others

A rare stamp and a corpse are discovered in Bath within hours of each other. As he investigates, Inspector Peter Diamond discovers that both the person who found the stamp and the victim belong to the Bloodhounds, an elite group of mystery lovers, who now urge Diamond to bring the murderer to justice. But there’s a hitch: the body lies inside a padlocked houseboat and the only key is in the pocket of a man with an airtight alibi.

In the small hours of a Sunday morning in the city of Bath, a policeman on beat duty is shot dead by an unseen gunman–the third killing of an officer in Somerset in a matter of weeks. The assassinations are the work of a sniper who seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once, always a step ahead.

The emergency services are summoned. Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the duty inspector, Ken Lockton, seals the crime scene, which is confined by the river on one side and a massive retaining wall on the other. He discovers the murder weapon in a garden–and is himself attacked and left for dead.

Enter Peter Diamond, Bath’s burly CID chief. Middle-aged and not built for action, he pits himself and his team against the killer in a hunt that will test his physical powers to the limit–for the evidence is starting to suggest that the killer just may be one of Britain’s finest.

Bath police detective Peter Diamond suffers no fools. Now his nightmare has come to pass: he has to collaborate with the most preposterous kind of fool he can imagine. The self-styled Johnny Getz (his business card proclaims he “Getz
Results!”) is a private investigator who has been hired to track down Septimus “Seppy” Hubbard, a missing antiques dealer whose case Diamond has been assigned by the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad. Johnny Getz is a Philip
Marlowe wannabe, complete with ridiculous private eye duds and a frustratingly high (and inaccurate) opinion of his detection skills. But is Getz’s real job to find a missing victim or to stymie Diamond’s progress?

In this celebration of the mystery genre’s greatest practitioners and most outrageous heroes, Peter Lovesey delivers another perfect Golden Age-style puzzle mystery, rippling with unforgettable one-liners and slapstick adventure,
and sparkling with brilliantly drawn secondary characters.

One-time police detective Peter Diamond loses his job as a security guard when he fails to spot a small Japanese child hiding in the furniture department of Harrods.

Weeks later, she is still unclaimed. Diamond is unable to forget the frightened eyes of the silent little girl and takes on the challenge of uncovering her identity.

Now Diamond is back in the sleuthing business, following a trail that leads from London to New York to Tokyo and to a shocking climax that may shatter his heart or cost him his life.

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?

Peter Diamond is tasked to run security for a wedding. Seems a bit beneath his extraordinary detective talents, as well as his title as head of Bath’s CID, but this isn’t your run-of-the-mill ceremony: the bride and groom belong to families on opposite ends of the law-and someone is trying to sabotage the nuptials by taking out a hit on the father of the bride. As a New Year begins in Bath, Ben Brace proposes to his long-term girlfriend, Caroline, the daughter of notorious crime baron, Joe Irving, who is coming to the end of a prison sentence. The problem is that Ben’s father, George, is the Deputy Chief Constable. A more uncomfortable set of in-laws would be hard to imagine. But mothers and sons are a formidable force: a wedding in the Abbey and reception in the Roman Baths are arranged before the career-obsessed DCC can step in. Peter Diamond, Bath’s head of CID, is appalled to be put in charge of security on the day. Ordered to be discreet, he packs a gun and a guest list in his best suit and must somehow cope with potential killers, gang rivals, warring parents, bossy photographers and straying bridesmaids. The laid-back Joe Irving seems oblivious to the danger he is in from rival gang leaders while Brace can’t wait for the day to end. Will the photo session be a literal shoot? Will Joe Irving’s speech as father of the bride be his last words? Can Diamond pull off a miracle, avert a tragedy and send the happy couple on their honeymoon?

Brighton in 1882 is the setting of this novel of crime and tangled emotions. Albert Moscrop, a visitor whose holiday is dedicated to peering through a
telescope at the seaside scene, marches down Queen’s Road to the beach and draws us through a sequence of disarmingly trivial observations into a compelling
drama, played in the fashionable haunts of the nineteenth-century resort: beach, piers, promenade, swimming bath, aquarium, and Devil’s Dyke.

A keen student of human nature, Moscrop concentrates his interest on one particular family of holidaymakers–the Protheros, and especially the beautiful
Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her excessively for granted. Gradually Moscrop moves into the circle of the Prothero family, only to become
involved in a sensational murder. All Brighton is horrified by the gruesome crime. The local police seek the help of Scotland Yard, which is provided in the persons of
Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray. These indomitable detectives soon find themselves challenged by the strangest case of their careers, one that is as mystifying as it is macabre.

More than fifty years ago, Peter Lovesey published a short story in an anthology. That story caught the eye of the great Ruth Rendell, whose praise ignited Lovesey’s lifelong passion for short form crime fiction.

On the occasion of his hundredth short story, Peter Lovesey has assembled this devilishly clever collection: eighteen yarns of mystery, melancholy, and mischief, inhabiting such deadly settings as a theater, a monastery, and the book publishing industry. The collection includes that first story that launched his story-writing career as well as three exclusive new stories. In addition, Lovesey fans will delight in a personal essay by the author about the historical inspirations–and in an appearance by the irascible Bath detective Peter Diamond, who has, in the author’s words, “bulldozed his way” into this volume.

In the six years since the start of the hit British TV show Swift, its cast and crew have been plagued by misfortune, beginning with the star actress’s pulling out of the show before it began. By now there have been multiple injuries by fall, fire, or drowning; two deaths; and two missing persons cases.

The media quickly decides it’s a curse, but who’s to say there isn’t a criminal conspiracy afoot? Now that the filming has moved to Bath, Peter Diamond, Chief of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad, is on the case. While the investigation
into one fatal accident is underway, a cameraman goes missing, challenging even the most credulous to wonder if he might have been the victim of foul play rather than a jinx. How can so many things go wrong on one set in such a short time?

Complicating already complex matters is the fact that Diamond’s boss is trying her best to get him out of her hair; he may be forced to retire if he can’t solve the case. Will this be the end for Peter Diamond?

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member. She resolves to sideline Diamond, but matters don’t pan out in accordance with her plans.

Pop diva Clarion Calhoun has packed the house with a celebrity appearance in Bath’s Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she is pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face.

When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage. As Diamond digs deeper, he uncovers rivalries among the cast and crew and is forced to confront his own mysterious and deep-seated phobia to find the killer.

The seventh Sergeant Cribb Investigation set in the seedy underbelly of Victorian London.

London, 1889: An elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped. Sergeant Cribb and Constable
Thackerey investigate and uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian mystery Three Men in a Boat.

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers’ Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class among the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a suspect. To clear himself, he must cooperate with formidable Detective Chief Inspector Henrietta Mallin.

The second Sergeant Cribb Investigation set in the seedy underbelly of VVictorian London..

Pugilism, a brutal form of bare-knuckle boxing, is forbidden by law in late Victorian England, but Sergeant Cribb discovers evidence that it continues in secret, finding a corpse whose hands were “pickled”
for fighting. He sends young constable Henry Jago to infiltrate the fighting ring, but Jago is endangered when more murders ensue.

On the 50th anniversary of the publication of his first novel, Peter Lovesey,
Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and titan of the British detective novel,
returns to the subject of his very first mystery–running.

Through a particularly ill-fated series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly, an
elementary school teacher, has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath’s
springtime half marathon. The training is brutal, but Maeve must disprove her
mother, who insists that exercise is a waste of her time, and collect pledges for her
aunt’s beloved charity. What she doesn’t know is just how vicious some of the other
runners are.

Meanwhile, Detective Peter Diamond is tasked with crowd control on the raucous
day of the race–and catches sight of a violent criminal he put away a decade ago, who
very much seems to be back to his old ways now that he is paroled. Diamond’s hackles
are already up when he learns that one of the runners never crossed the finish line and
disappeared without a trace. Was Diamond a spectator to murder?

Recipient of the British Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger, Gold Dagger, and Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, Peter Lovesey has also won Anthony and Macavity Awards for his splendid mysteries. In The Headhunters, an innocent discussion about killing the boss leads friends Gemma and Jo into real-life murder. “Lovesey is a master.”-Washington Post Book World

The corpse of a beautiful woman, clad in only a bathing suit, is found strangled to death on a popular Sussex beach. When she is finally identified, it turns out she was a top profiler for the National Crime Faculty, who was working on the case of a serial killer. And though she was a Bath resident, the authorities don’t want Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond to investigate the murder. How strange. What could they be trying to hide?

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry.

So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit. Struggling with a jigsaw puzzle of truant choirboys, teddy bears, a black Mercedes, and Jane Austen memorabilia, Diamond persists, even after the powers-that-be have decided there’s enough evidence to make a conviction.

Delia Williamson, a waitress and mother of two young girls, is reported missing. She is soon found in a public park, hanging from the crossbar of a children’s swing set. The postmortem reveals that she has been murdered. Her current partner, ex-husband, and a traveling salesman who frequented her restaurant are all suspects. Before Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond can solve the mystery, more will die. But even as he pursues a killer, he finds himself pursued by a secret admirer.

The third Peter Diamond investigation John Mountjoy has escaped from prison and kidnapped the chief constable’s daughter. The only person he’ll parley with is Detective Peter Diamond, who arrested him four years earlier for the murder of a young journalist. Mountjoy, who still maintains his innocence, has a simple request for Diamond. All the detective has to do is find the real killer and clear Mountjoy’s name, and the hostage will be free to go. But in the intervening four years, the trail has gone cold and memories have turned hazy, making the hunt for the killer even more complicated the second time around. Will Diamond get to the bottom of the cold case before another life is lost?

London, 1884: A series of bomb blasts in public places is causing mayhem throughout the city. Even Scotland Yard’s CID office becomes a target, throwing suspicion on Constable Thackeray. The primary suspects are Irish terrorists seeking independence, but could the villain be someone else? A beautiful Irish woman? An American athlete? Sergeant Cribb reluctantly enrolls in a bomb-making course and infiltrates the Dynamite Party.

Based on the real events in London between 1884-1885, the story had its own resonance ninety years on.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth. For Diamond, who wouldn’t know a Stradivarius from a French horn, the investigation is his most demanding ever. Three mysterious deaths need to be probed while his own personal life is in free fall.

A skeletal hand is unearthed in the vault under the Pump Room in Bath, England, near the site where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Then a skull is excavated. The bones came from different corpses, and one is modern. Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond must solve a series of crimes including murder and forgery, requiring a knowledge of history, nineteenth-century art, literature . . . and human nature.

A young woman is dumped, injured, and unconscious, in a private hospital’s parking lot. She is an amnesiac with no memory prior to her discovery by hospital personnel. Detective Inspector Peter Diamond of the Bath homicide squad is unwilling to become involved. He has other, more important cases to solve: A woman has plunged to her death from the roof of a local landmark while half the young people of Bath partied below, and an elderly farmer has shot himself. Are these apparent suicides what they seem, or are there sinister forces at work? And might the amnesiac woman hold the key to both cases?

The eighth Sergeant Cribb Investigation set in the seedy underbelly of Victorian London.

Though the beautiful Miriam Cromer has confessed to the murder of her husband’s assistant, she is still confident of her acquittal. But then she is sentenced to hang. She blames her husband, but he has an alibi. Sergeant Cribb
and Constable Thackeray must discover what really happened at Park Lodge on 12th March, 1888, and quickly.