The Last Detective (1991) by Peter Lovesey

The Last Detective is the debut of Peter Lovesey’s DCI Peter Diamond

who would be the star of the rest of Lovesey’s novels. Diamond is the titular “last detective,” “a genuine gumshoe, not some lad out of police school with a degree in computer studies.” The case he’s faced with promises to be “a real test of his sleuthing ability. An unidentified corpse. No clothes to identify her from a million other women. No marks of any significance. No murder weapon.” The woman in question is fished out of a lake, having been there for weeks. Diamond thinks the key to figuring out who she is and who killed her will come through wearing out leather, knocking on doors, and making public inquiries. Her identity is swiftly determined to be Geraldine “Gerry” Snoo, a former soap opera star who lost her main role a year and a half ago and has never quite gotten over it. Diamond quickly narrows in on her English professor husband, who’s explanation for why it took him three weeks to report her missing sounds flimsy. But of course, it’s not that easy.

Unlike the previous two Lovesey’s I read, this is a police procedural, with a focus on realism. We get our first glimpse of this early on when the reliable M.D. isn’t able to give a firm cause of death for quite a bit of the first part of the book. The solution comes not through brilliant deductions from small pieces of evidence, but from careful elimination of the suspects, Diamond’s knowledge of human nature, and his distrust of the “men in white coats” and their DNA evidence (which at this early stage, is referred to as "genetic fingerprinting.”) It’s a very slow-paced and talky novel, with much being dedicated to the narratives of two of the key suspects in the crime. This is no simple domestic drama, but has its roots in the saving of a young boy from drowning, a forbidden attraction, and, befitting a former English professor, two letters from the hand of Jane Austin.

Diamond is a respectable protagonist. He’s gruff, rude, and a technophobe, but Lovesey doesn’t allow him to rampage freely over the narrative. He embarrasses himself, doesn’t always get one over his subordinates, and ultimately proves to be a fair man, capable of pushing aside his personal frustrations. The bit of his backstory where he's implicated in police brutality reads worse today, but Lovesey doesn’t dwell on it. He goes through the wringer here, and you’re rooting for him at the end. But I don’t know if Lovesey really pulls off the “last detective” element. Diamond does figure out how the men in white coats were outsmarted at the end, but other than that, I didn’t really get the feeling that old-fashioned police work was winning out over technology. I also would have liked to see more cluing. The final culprit makes sense, but like I said, it's more Diamond's instinct and knowledge of people that points him towards the truth.

You might suspect I didn’t care for the book too much. That would be true. Part of this is simple expectation; I thought that Lovesey was going to write something more traditional. But like I said, this is a police procedural. Lovesey does have some good surprises in store. He got me good with the killer, for one. But overall, this really wasn’t what I expected. I found it heavy going at times.

But I will say that as an example of it’s form, The Last Detective is good. This won’t be the last you see of Peter Diamond on this blog, but hopefully I’ll have adjusted my expectations, or Lovesey will have written something more traditional. Recommended, with Caveats (i.e. I didn’t like it, but you might.)

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.