Starred review from September 1, 2008
Set in 1990s Bath, England (to call the setting modern-day would be misleading, given the moldy ambiance), Lovesey's latest police proceduralDfeaturing his best-known "copper," the oversized and grumpy Peter DiamondDdeftly blends Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, William Blake and '60's hard-rock music. (At one point Diamond drives down the highway lustily singing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust.") This story of severed appendages and missing heads moves from the subterranean crypt where Ms. Shelley's pen brought her monster alive, to Peg Redbird's shady antique business, Noble and Nude, and eventually to a pub calledDwith typical Lovesey humorDthe Brains Surgery. American literature professor Joe Dougan and his twittery wife, Donna, arrive in Bath to explore bookstores and boutiques, when corpses begin to litter the landscape. Danger besets them in the form of an attacker who likes to bludgeon his victims and fantasizes himself to be Shelley's monster. Then Donna disappears. As always with this Golden Dagger Award-winning author, the story crackles with wit and urbanity, snappy dialogue and deeper, fouler doings whispering from the wings. Diamond and his put-upon sidekicks, Leaman and Halliwell, chase a madman whose musings tantalize at intervals, while Dougan searches desperately for his absent spouse. This is a stunning tale of the macabre and the mundane.
August 1, 2000
A construction worker delivers a pizza box containing a skeletal hand to the local cop shop in Bath, England. The hand was unearthed in a vault under the house where Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein." Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, whose combative yet cultured nature resembles Oxford's Inspector Morse, takes on the hand, then a skull, and finally, the media, frenzied by the connection to the Shelley household. Meanwhile, an Ohio literature professor unwittingly upends Diamond's investigation in his search for Mary Shelley's diary. This being Bath, interest shuttles between the recent crime and a mystery long interred in the nineteenth century. A wealth of good things fills this novel: Lovesey's deft plotting, his hilarious send-ups of the Brits through the perspective of the American professor, and his intriguing allusions to the architecture and literary history of Bath (here he focuses on the "mad, bad crowd" of the Shelleys and Lord Byron). ((Reviewed August 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)
September 1, 2000
This sixth novel in the series featuring Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond by much-acclaimed crime writer Lovesey (who won the CWA/Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award) opens with the unearthing of a skeletal hand. Linking this discovery to a murder, Lovesey (Upon a Dark Night) masterfully unites two separate crimes with several subplots to create a surprising and convoluted ending. Set in Bath, England, The Vault delves into the rich, historical world of antique dealers and antiquarian book collectors. Diamond, the complex hero of these carefully plotted novels, displays brilliant Holmesian investigative skill, combined with a generous disregard for police politics and a naughty sense of humor. Essential for popular fiction collections, especially those public libraries that maintain a healthy mystery/crime fiction section.--Zaheera Jiwaji, Edmonton, Alberta
Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.