The Vault (Peter Diamond Series #6)

Tom Nolan

The Vault displays Peter Lovesey's delicate balance of humor and suspense—one of the delights of contemporary crime fiction.
— Wall Street Journal

New York Times Book Review

Exquisitely intricate.

Wall Street Journal

Displays Peter Lovesey's delicate balance of humor and suspense — one of the delights of contemporary crime fiction.

Publishers Weekly

Set in 1990s Bath, England (to call the setting modern-day would be misleading, given the moldy ambiance), Lovesey's latest police procedural--featuring his best-known "copper," the oversized and grumpy Peter Diamond--deftly 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 called--with typical Lovesey humor--the 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. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

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 Cahners Business Information.\

Kirkus Reviews

Nobody is better at misdirecting the gentle reader and snaking together multiple storylines than the wily Lovesey, who in his sixth case for Peter Diamond, tendentious head of Bath's Murder Squad (Upon a Dark Night, 1998, etc.), unearths various body parts underneath number five, Abbey Churchyard, the former home of Frankenstein's creator Mary Shelley. While the tabloids spout ghoulish headlines connecting the bones to Shelleyan monsters, American professor Joe Dougan and his shopaholic wife Donna are hot on the trail of real Shelley artifacts, including a book with the author's inscription on the flyleaf and her writing desk. Soon after the desk disappears from antiques dealer Peg Redbird's shop, as do several illustrations for Frankenstein that may be the work of William Blake, Redbird dies, the professor's wife disappears, and one of the suspects, Councillor John Sturr, produces a suspiciously unimpeachable alibi: he was attending a party at the assistant chief constable's home. Meanwhile, Diamond ties those rattling Churchyard bones into the disappearance of a young man 25 years ago, practically yesterday in Shelley history. Before a name can be attached to the severed hands, though, and villains past and present held accountable, Diamond's nemesis Inspector Wigfull will be hospitalized, and snoopy journalist Ingeborg Smith will switch careers and abet the Murder Squad.