As the 11th book in Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, THE SECRET HANGMAN also is one of the most emotionally complex.
Diamond is an inspector with the Bath, England, police department. He’s had a rough go of it in the first 10 books, but things could be looking up if the relationship he’s developing with an attractive widow works out well. But he’s also the victim of a “secret admirer” whose notes and homemade goodies have gotten under his skin.
His real problems, however, are the corpses that are being discovered hanging in very public places all over the city. First, a wife is found dangling, then a few days later, her husband shows up. Diamond believes it is probably a case of murder/suicide until he realizes that a similar crime took place some time back. And then wife number three is found.
There’s just something about death by hanging that gets the flesh to creeping. Add to that the notion that, unlikely as it seems, Diamond could be facing contagious cases of murder/suicide, and the world starts sliding off the rails. Lovesey is an old hand at combining the everyday world of slogging police work with outré crime.
Readers coming to the series for the first time won’t be bringing with them the information that Diamond’s own wife was murdered several years ago and he has been an emotional recluse, but several characters comment on his personal history through the course of the investigation. Combine that with the pressure that is applied by the public whenever such a high-profile crime makes the media, and you have a lot of tension at work.
And what’s a good police procedural without a second, apparently less dangerous case going on at the same time the hangings are taking place? Diamond’s new romantic relationship becomes threatened when his lady’s adult son has his new car stolen and it ends up being used in a series of automobile smash-and-grab robberies.
Lovesey continues his reign as one of Britain’s most creative and rewarding mystery writers. His dialogue crackles, his characters are believable, and his plotting is near-perfect. THE SECRET HANGMAN is clever with an aura of pervading creepiness, and is definitely worth hanging around for.
And in the interest of full disclosure, let me confess that I’ve spent some time hanging out with Lovesey, and if you read the Diamond book called BLOODHOUNDS – an excellent locked-room mystery of the old school – you’ll come across “the Bentin family from Oklahoma” visiting in Bath. That’s my wife, my son and me. I was hoping we’d be presented as an itinerant family of serial killers. I guess for that I’d have to meet John Sandford. –Doug Bentin
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