The House Sitter by
Peter Lovesey
hbk out March 03
Published by Little Brown
at £16.99
Although Peter Lovesey first earned acclaim for historical mysteries, in recent years
he has focused mainly on contemporary novels, most of them featuring the Bath cop
Peter Diamond. Diamond's latest case is elaborate: it combines the murder - on a
beach - of ace criminal profiler Emma Tysoe and the series of killings being
committed by a murderer who becomes known as 'the Mariner' (after the Rime)
which Emma was investigating at the time of her death. The Mariner has already
killed once and threatened two more victims, but the police cannot fathom what links
the three people against whom he has such a grudge.
This novel, from one of our leading storytellers, features a crisp and dramatic opening
and an excellent solution. My only reservation concerns the length of the book - it is
(or feels) more drawn-out than other Lovesey novels, and perhaps the rather slow-
moving middle section would have benefited from a little cutting. Much play is made
of the interaction between Diamond, his female colleague Hen Mallin, and the high-
flying cop James Barneston, who was Emma's lover and who thus himself becomes a
suspect. The two mysteries, naturally, inter-relate and the central idea of the book,
explained when Diamond's traditional detective methods finally pay dividends, is
very neat. This book is not quite in the same class as earlier Loveseys such as 'The
Vault' and 'The Reaper', but it is still highly enjoyable.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries)
The House Sitter by
Peter Lovesey
