At the start of MWA Grandmaster Lovesey's entertaining, often amusing 20th Peter Diamond investigation (after 2020's The Finisher), the Bath, England, detective superintendent is annoyed to be accosted at a pub by private eye Johnny Getz (his business card reads: Getz results), who needs Diamond's help. Getz has been hired by Ruby Hubbard to find her antique dealer father, who went missing after a recent break-in at his shop. Since the shop is now a crime scene, Ruby needs police permission to enter the premises and see what was taken. Diamond reluctantly joins forces with Getz, and the mismatched duo soon stumble on a corpse in a mummy case, the first of several bodies. Meanwhile, Ruby is shot in the head and slips into a coma. Chapters narrated by Getz, full of 1940s American slang ("I'm a take-whatever-comes-and-sock-it-back-to-them kind of guy") and put-downs of Diamond ("Everything about him screamed idle bastard"), enliven what he calls the "snaggy saga" as the action builds to a Poirot-like solution to the "wandering father job." Though this is a slighter entry in the Diamond canon, fans won't be disappointed. Agent: Jane Gelfman, ICM/Gelfman Schneider Literary. (Oct.)

Glory be! British crime novelist Lovesey is back, bringing along his beloved series hero, the grumpy, darkly funny, and--beneath it all--strictly business Peter Diamond, detective inspector with the Bath constabulary. It's all here: mystery, sparky writing, and a cast of characters who come alive on the page, moving through a tricky plot that we know is playing us for suckers. And we love it. This time the action is triggered by a break-in at an antique shop. It has to do with the owner's recent acquisition of an "action painting"--that is, globs of paint smeared on a canvas in the manner of Jackson Pollock. Then Lovesey springs a ringer. He introduces Johnny Getz, a self-described gumshoe and suddenly a first-person narrator, carrying chunks of the novel on his own. He has a head full of book and movie PIs and would love to be them. Especially Travis McGee, for his ability to cheer unhappy women with his, um, "magic wand." Diamond can't stand him. Their feuding almost overshadows the plot of this delightful novel. Then we learn the secret of that messy canvas.

Claimant to Gold, Silver, and Diamond CWA Daggers, Lovesey returns with another tale starring Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond of Bath, England, who's investigating the disappearance of a local antiques dealer. Alas, the dealer's daughter has complicated matters by hiring hopeless private eye Johnny Getz to look into the case, and the dead body in the storeroom doesn't make things any easier.

Move over, Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond. The Avon and Somerset CID is about to be joined, jostled, and decentered by two other parties interested in an otherwise ordinary burglary. Just because Johnny Getz--probably not his real name--is a private eye doesn't mean he doesn't think Pete, as he insists on calling Diamond, should work with him. Johnny's client, fashion designer Ruby Hubbard, is worried sick because her father, Septimus Hubbard, has been missing ever since his antiques shop was robbed. Ruby can't even get access to the storefront to find out what's missing and what clues to his whereabouts Seppy might have left behind. Diamond reluctantly agrees to let Ruby look over the place and share a bit of information with Johnny, and in no time at all there are dramatic new developments: During their preliminary search of the shop, Ruby finds a stranger's corpse neatly laid out in an Egyptian coffin, and then Ruby herself is shot and ends up in the hospital. Diamond, meanwhile, has to contend with a second interloper of a very different stripe: Lady Virginia Bede, a much-married, archly seductive lay member of the ethics committee who attaches herself to his investigation as a sixth wheel. The search for Seppy and what looks more and more like an exceptionally valuable painting he'd purchased from buyers who hadn't a clue what they were selling would be routine, at least by Lovesey's high standards, if Johnny didn't keep interrupting the flow of the procedural with first-person chapters in his own pungent style, floridly reminiscent of the fictional American shamuses he clearly wishes he were one of. A mundane plot juiced by those unwelcome hangers-on. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.