DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN by Peter Lovesey

"Is there corruption in the Sussex Police Department?"

Down Among the Dead Men

Posted: August 6, 2015

Peter Lovesey has a new mystery out this summer that makes you wonder about all those news stories of missing people you hear about in the news. With the setting placed in a small town named Sussex in England, Lovesey brings questions and dismay to his distinguished characters. It's the return of Peter Diamond, the "get it done with no nonsense" detective. DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN is one of those great novels to read if you love those good English mysteries.

Detective Peter Diamond is roped into helping Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore with Internal Affairs as they investigate another detective that Diamond knew and worked with years ago. However, he does not let Dallymore know this. The detective under investigation, who has always held herself up to respectable standards, has made a breach of ethics after finding DNA that relates to a family member.

As Diamond and Dallymore investigate, they find a whole bunch of cold cases of missing persons along with two recent ones that Diamond cannot turn away from. One of these is Miss Gibbon, the art teacher at a nearby school. She is quickly replaced with a much cooler and handsome teacher who is very wealthy. Somehow Diamond feels they might be connected to the case with his old friend and if so, in what way?

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN by Peter Lovesey is a quick read for such a thorough story. Peter Diamond has become a favorite detective of mine after reading Lovesey's novel. Though this is not his first in the Peter Diamond series, it is the second one I have read and I hope to read more of them.

Book Summary

Peter Diamond takes a dive down among the dead men to solve a seven-year-old murder case in the latest installment of Peter Lovesey's classic procedural series.

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?