Pick it up, put it down, pick it up, it sticks. That was my experience with Diamond Dust, the seventh novel in Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. Diamond Dust was part of my big purchase from Soho Press right before Christmas. I had intended to get the second book in the series, Diamond Solitaire, but ordered wrong. Given that I dislike reading series out of sequence, and that I didn't adore The Last Detective (and had completely forgotten about Down Among the Dead Men) I grumped about with this a bit, starting and then stopping. In the end, I'm glad I started again.
Peter Diamond, of the Bath (England) CID, is your standard grouchy, I-did-it-my-way, occasionally self-destructive and occasionally brilliant detective. Sort of a more mature and therefore somewhat less obnoxious Danny Reagan from "Blue Bloods." He's had a long career in Bahhth with the requisite ups and downs, presumably chronicled in the novels between The Last Detective and this one. I still don't particularly like Diamond. I don't find bull-headedness appealing, especially when it seems mostly used to further the plot, and other than that, he's surprisingly one-dimensional for someone with so many years experience.
THAT SAID. I did ultimately quite enjoy Diamond Dust, Diamond himself notwithstanding. The plot here seems simple: Diamond's wife is murdered, and he may not be involved in the investigation. He's also considered a suspect which, I suppose understandably, pisses him off. So, he runs his own parallel, stripped-down investigation, angering the officials and occasionally blundering into trouble. There is another plot thread about a diamond heist that doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything until pretty late in the story. How it all sorts out I'll leave for you to find out.
What's great here is the way Lovesey twists the murder plot, just as it seems to stall. The turns occasionally feel a bit too serendipitous, but who knows, maybe that is how police work goes - 10% effort 90% luck or some such sage saying. You might suss out the intersection of the two plots earlier, or you might think, as I did, why did we spend so much time developing that aspect of that plot, was it because there really wasn't anything going on in the other one? But by then you'll be caught in it and reading to see if the killer will ever be discovered.
I did have an inkling of whodunit, but then I decided (as I'm sure Lovesey wanted) nah, can't be . . . .
If I liked Diamond better, I might go back and look at more of this series. Might anyway, it is not a bad way to pass 30 minutes on the stationery bike every day.
Showing posts with label Peter Lovesey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Lovesey. Show all posts
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Down Among the Dead Men
Sometimes I wonder what it is about crime fiction that I find so enjoyable. Certainly the escape factor - you can't fret about section allocation or committee staffing when murder is at hand! And my focus on non-US, non-contemporary means that whatever I read gets me out of myself.
But a key piece for me is character development. If you've spent any time with Crime Pays, you'll know that I particularly enjoy a well-developed character. Whether funny - a la Bryant and May - or wicked smaht like Flavia de Luce or Quirke, or conflicted like Martin Limon's MPs or any le Carre character, the more complex Our Hero is, the better the story is.
This is why I was underwhelmed with the first Peter Diamond investigation I read. Just didn't get it about this vaguely grumpy, slightly cynical cop. Not that I mind grumpy or cynical, but there didn't seem to be a strong reason for him to be so. So when a new book by Peter Lovesey showed up in my monthly Soho shipment - now several months ago, I am sadly behind - I did not jump on it. The Soho club readings have been uneven, and I added this to the pile.
Then I read a capsule review in the always-helpful Crime column in the New York Times Book Review. Marilyn Stasio is a good indicator, and I think the word stylish may even have been used. I wouldn't go that far, but it intrigued me enough to pick up Down Among the Dead Men (Soho Press, 2015) and see what I'd missed.
Plenty! I still think Our Hero Peter Diamond is not a particularly complex character. He falls into the DCI Banks model of good cop/irrascible man, a model which you see just a little too often and which seems to be deployed as a form of complexity. I'm still not sure why he is a bit cynical or slightly lazy. But in this story, Diamond and his commanding officer, Georgina Dallymore, are sent off to Sussex to investigate a possible case of internal misconduct. The misconduct piece almost becomes secondary to the clever characterization of Georgina, who is by turns overconfident, insecure, misguided, shrewd, and ultimately supportive of Diamond's approach.
"Satisfied, she rubbed her hands. She almost clapped. 'We're a team that gets things done, Peter. Two intereviews already, Henrietta Mallin and her brother, and both went rather well, with me setting the agenda, so to speak, and you following up on the detail. If people see us as Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty, so be it. That's a well-tried method of interrogation.'
She meant good cop bad cop. Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty was another nugget to tuck away." (147-8)
Our Hero finds himself a bit conflicted with respect to his deeply annoying but ultimately fairly effective boss.
"'I don't know how you stand it, Peter. I lost my cool with her, as you saw.'
'Practice. Georgina and I understand each other. In fact, I've got to know her a lot better since we came on this trip. I dicsovered she has a soft underbelly.'
The crossed swords of the Victory Arch in Baghdad were no higher than Hen's eyebrows. 'The mind boggles.'" (194)
Lovesey has fun drawing Georgina as a foil to Diamond but doesn't make her a complete joke. And Diamond himself is funnier than many Brit cops, not veering too far into the sardonic.
The internal affairs case turns out to be part of something larger and more sinister (no surprise there, else where would be the story?) and there are several plot lines that actually all pull together more or less in an ending that does not strain credulity (that is a compliment). Art, plants, and diving - it is something of a feat to tie those up! More interesting characters pop up along the way. There is a girls school with some well-drawn students and are-they-or-aren't-they evil teachers, some artists who are more than they appear, parents with pasts, and a quite excellent vignette in a trailer with the parents of a missing girl.
"Diamond had been watching Barry Mallin for any sign of what was really going on in his head. Here was a controlling man who had raised a daughter who haad rebelled, sold just about everyting he owned to rescure her and pull her back into line. Now he was faced with another huge family crisis. How had he dealt with it. Was he responsible for hte disappearance of Joss?" (138)
I like how Lovesey gets a little bit into the head of the unpleasant Mallin and there is more of this.
Don't mistake any of this for the witty and kooky folks you might find in a Dr. Siri mystery, or the deeply conflictedly convoluted characters of The Secret Agent. But Lovesey does find the balance, and a touch of humor never hurts. You might just go pick and give ol' Diamond another try.
But a key piece for me is character development. If you've spent any time with Crime Pays, you'll know that I particularly enjoy a well-developed character. Whether funny - a la Bryant and May - or wicked smaht like Flavia de Luce or Quirke, or conflicted like Martin Limon's MPs or any le Carre character, the more complex Our Hero is, the better the story is.
This is why I was underwhelmed with the first Peter Diamond investigation I read. Just didn't get it about this vaguely grumpy, slightly cynical cop. Not that I mind grumpy or cynical, but there didn't seem to be a strong reason for him to be so. So when a new book by Peter Lovesey showed up in my monthly Soho shipment - now several months ago, I am sadly behind - I did not jump on it. The Soho club readings have been uneven, and I added this to the pile.
Then I read a capsule review in the always-helpful Crime column in the New York Times Book Review. Marilyn Stasio is a good indicator, and I think the word stylish may even have been used. I wouldn't go that far, but it intrigued me enough to pick up Down Among the Dead Men (Soho Press, 2015) and see what I'd missed.
Plenty! I still think Our Hero Peter Diamond is not a particularly complex character. He falls into the DCI Banks model of good cop/irrascible man, a model which you see just a little too often and which seems to be deployed as a form of complexity. I'm still not sure why he is a bit cynical or slightly lazy. But in this story, Diamond and his commanding officer, Georgina Dallymore, are sent off to Sussex to investigate a possible case of internal misconduct. The misconduct piece almost becomes secondary to the clever characterization of Georgina, who is by turns overconfident, insecure, misguided, shrewd, and ultimately supportive of Diamond's approach.
"Satisfied, she rubbed her hands. She almost clapped. 'We're a team that gets things done, Peter. Two intereviews already, Henrietta Mallin and her brother, and both went rather well, with me setting the agenda, so to speak, and you following up on the detail. If people see us as Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty, so be it. That's a well-tried method of interrogation.'
She meant good cop bad cop. Miss Nice and Mr. Nasty was another nugget to tuck away." (147-8)
Our Hero finds himself a bit conflicted with respect to his deeply annoying but ultimately fairly effective boss.
"'I don't know how you stand it, Peter. I lost my cool with her, as you saw.'
'Practice. Georgina and I understand each other. In fact, I've got to know her a lot better since we came on this trip. I dicsovered she has a soft underbelly.'
The crossed swords of the Victory Arch in Baghdad were no higher than Hen's eyebrows. 'The mind boggles.'" (194)
Lovesey has fun drawing Georgina as a foil to Diamond but doesn't make her a complete joke. And Diamond himself is funnier than many Brit cops, not veering too far into the sardonic.
"Diamond had been watching Barry Mallin for any sign of what was really going on in his head. Here was a controlling man who had raised a daughter who haad rebelled, sold just about everyting he owned to rescure her and pull her back into line. Now he was faced with another huge family crisis. How had he dealt with it. Was he responsible for hte disappearance of Joss?" (138)
I like how Lovesey gets a little bit into the head of the unpleasant Mallin and there is more of this.
Don't mistake any of this for the witty and kooky folks you might find in a Dr. Siri mystery, or the deeply conflictedly convoluted characters of The Secret Agent. But Lovesey does find the balance, and a touch of humor never hurts. You might just go pick and give ol' Diamond another try.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Brits
This is the second of a few catch-up posts, to give an idea of where my crime reading ranges.
Of course, the British are acknowledged masters of all kinds of crime fiction. Conan Doyle, Agathe Christie, need we say more? Well, yes, and this select list barely scratches the surface of this deep pool.
A late-breaking fave for me is Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. These are a must for any anglophile or London-ophile or really anyone who admires brilliant eccentricity. They verge on the too-cute, so if you don't like humor, esp. the British kind, steer clear of Bryant and May. That said, the later ones get rather darker at times and that helps to keep the cute in check. They are also so drenched by a topically narrow flood of intellectual minutae (London history), that one can drown in the details. But what an enjoyable way to go. The culinary notes here that stick here, truly, are obscure British boiled sweeties, and Arthur Bryant's West Indian landlady Alma (who cannot cook according to Bryant, but does, quite a bit). Fowler's next installment starring the indomitable and apparently indesctructable duo is due out in March, hoorah.
In a rather different vein, yet still very very British, is Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series. Classic village mysteries starring Rutledge and his hant, Hamish. The conceit of Rutledge's WW1-generated shell shock manifesting itself as a the ghost of a man whom he executed for dereliction of duty is inventive, proper in an English way, and just shivery enough to keep you on guard as you read. Here's an interview with Rutledge himself. One must drink gallons of tea while reading an Ian Rutledge novel., and look forward to thick buttered toast served in farmhouse kitchens. None of the anglophilic pleasure of these books is diminished by the realization that Charles Todd is actually a mother-and-son writing team living in North Carolina. What fun they must have researching and writing these novels.
I don't think those creepy ones set in the English churches count here, Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. The premise is that Merrily, the parish priest in a postcard perfect English village, is also an exorcist of sorts (although that term is a bit dramatic for the locals), and apparently there is loads of dark and evil stuff just sitting under that picturesque frosting, with which Merrily must do regular battle. They grabbed my attention for a while but ultimately I found them providing not so much a frisson of creepiness but a shrug of depression. Lighten up, people.
Ian Rankin is a fave author among those who follow British crime, and I've just read the first in his John Rebus series, Knots and Crosses. Edinburgh this time (so, technically not a Brit but let's call it the UK until they get that indepedence vote), and again working the theme of exposing-the-dark-underside-of-a-beloved-city, a bit like Rickman above. But while Rankin's Rebus is as depressed a detective as one can run across in this literature (maybe only surpassed by Kurt Wallander), he's a little nastier than Merrily Watkins, and since you can't blame the bad stuff on the underworld or the afterworld or whatever they call it in the border country, the story is far more compelling. It is also better-written. I look forward to reading more of these.
And finally, in a complete departure from Rebus, I recently read Charles Finch's A Beautiful Blue Death, the first in a series starring a Victorian gentleman sleuth named Charles Lenox. Here we are back in England in her glory days, height of the Empire, country houses, urban gin pots, lords and ladies, etc. It could all be a bit twee, but just when it threatens to settle into costume drama, Finch manages to move the plot along with a brisk twist, and he's a pretty good writer for a Yalie. I confess a certain pleasure at settling in with Lenox this winter, since his genuine delight in a good cup of tea in front a roaring fire is so very evident from the start. I could do with less of his lady friend, since it is only her wealth and station that permits her to operate so independently (his too, for that matter), so readers who are offended by class-consciousness should look elsewhere for their 19th sleuthing.
This is obviously a very short list. Ranking them on a pure enjoyment scale, I'd probably say Fowler, Todd, Rankin, Lenox. Writing-wise, mybe Rankin would top this list. Fowler and Todd have new ones out or coming out, and I want to read more Rankin and Benjamin Black (if we include Scotland here, maybe Ireland?). That's going to be a lot of tea.
Update: I'm realizing that I left a couple off of here. John Lawton's Frederick Troy series gets a lot of love from the critics, I gather. I read Second Violin, which is the sixth book in the series, although it offers the backstory for all the others, so one can read it first. Didn't take to it - too many plot lines, cliffhanger-y chapters, and a hero who has a lot gals on strings. It felt much shallower than I had thought it would. Still, people love these, so maybe I'll try another someday.
Finally, I tried out Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series, set in Bath, England, with The Last Detective. Another that really didn't stick. Diamond is supposed to be hard-boiled and gruff, but doesn't really have any other character traits as far as I can tell, and lacks the introspection of other hard-boiled but more complicated detectives such as John Rebus or Salvo Montalbano.
Of course, the British are acknowledged masters of all kinds of crime fiction. Conan Doyle, Agathe Christie, need we say more? Well, yes, and this select list barely scratches the surface of this deep pool.
A late-breaking fave for me is Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. These are a must for any anglophile or London-ophile or really anyone who admires brilliant eccentricity. They verge on the too-cute, so if you don't like humor, esp. the British kind, steer clear of Bryant and May. That said, the later ones get rather darker at times and that helps to keep the cute in check. They are also so drenched by a topically narrow flood of intellectual minutae (London history), that one can drown in the details. But what an enjoyable way to go. The culinary notes here that stick here, truly, are obscure British boiled sweeties, and Arthur Bryant's West Indian landlady Alma (who cannot cook according to Bryant, but does, quite a bit). Fowler's next installment starring the indomitable and apparently indesctructable duo is due out in March, hoorah.
In a rather different vein, yet still very very British, is Charles Todd's Ian Rutledge series. Classic village mysteries starring Rutledge and his hant, Hamish. The conceit of Rutledge's WW1-generated shell shock manifesting itself as a the ghost of a man whom he executed for dereliction of duty is inventive, proper in an English way, and just shivery enough to keep you on guard as you read. Here's an interview with Rutledge himself. One must drink gallons of tea while reading an Ian Rutledge novel., and look forward to thick buttered toast served in farmhouse kitchens. None of the anglophilic pleasure of these books is diminished by the realization that Charles Todd is actually a mother-and-son writing team living in North Carolina. What fun they must have researching and writing these novels.
I don't think those creepy ones set in the English churches count here, Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series. The premise is that Merrily, the parish priest in a postcard perfect English village, is also an exorcist of sorts (although that term is a bit dramatic for the locals), and apparently there is loads of dark and evil stuff just sitting under that picturesque frosting, with which Merrily must do regular battle. They grabbed my attention for a while but ultimately I found them providing not so much a frisson of creepiness but a shrug of depression. Lighten up, people.
Ian Rankin is a fave author among those who follow British crime, and I've just read the first in his John Rebus series, Knots and Crosses. Edinburgh this time (so, technically not a Brit but let's call it the UK until they get that indepedence vote), and again working the theme of exposing-the-dark-underside-of-a-beloved-city, a bit like Rickman above. But while Rankin's Rebus is as depressed a detective as one can run across in this literature (maybe only surpassed by Kurt Wallander), he's a little nastier than Merrily Watkins, and since you can't blame the bad stuff on the underworld or the afterworld or whatever they call it in the border country, the story is far more compelling. It is also better-written. I look forward to reading more of these.
And finally, in a complete departure from Rebus, I recently read Charles Finch's A Beautiful Blue Death, the first in a series starring a Victorian gentleman sleuth named Charles Lenox. Here we are back in England in her glory days, height of the Empire, country houses, urban gin pots, lords and ladies, etc. It could all be a bit twee, but just when it threatens to settle into costume drama, Finch manages to move the plot along with a brisk twist, and he's a pretty good writer for a Yalie. I confess a certain pleasure at settling in with Lenox this winter, since his genuine delight in a good cup of tea in front a roaring fire is so very evident from the start. I could do with less of his lady friend, since it is only her wealth and station that permits her to operate so independently (his too, for that matter), so readers who are offended by class-consciousness should look elsewhere for their 19th sleuthing.
This is obviously a very short list. Ranking them on a pure enjoyment scale, I'd probably say Fowler, Todd, Rankin, Lenox. Writing-wise, mybe Rankin would top this list. Fowler and Todd have new ones out or coming out, and I want to read more Rankin and Benjamin Black (if we include Scotland here, maybe Ireland?). That's going to be a lot of tea.
Update: I'm realizing that I left a couple off of here. John Lawton's Frederick Troy series gets a lot of love from the critics, I gather. I read Second Violin, which is the sixth book in the series, although it offers the backstory for all the others, so one can read it first. Didn't take to it - too many plot lines, cliffhanger-y chapters, and a hero who has a lot gals on strings. It felt much shallower than I had thought it would. Still, people love these, so maybe I'll try another someday.
Finally, I tried out Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond series, set in Bath, England, with The Last Detective. Another that really didn't stick. Diamond is supposed to be hard-boiled and gruff, but doesn't really have any other character traits as far as I can tell, and lacks the introspection of other hard-boiled but more complicated detectives such as John Rebus or Salvo Montalbano.
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