Peter Lovesey's new book is
The Stone Wife (Soho Crime), the 14th novel featuring Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Bath, England, police department.
From the author's Q & A with J. Kingston Pierce at The Rap Sheet:
JKP: What was your original conception of Inspector Peter Diamond, and how do you think he has measured up to your expectations?
PL: Calling him “The Last Detective,” I made him one of the old-school of police sleuths, resisting the teamwork that characterizes modern investigation. Having a central character who does all the active detective work and deduction is impossible in the real world, but all crime writers have to contrive some way of fixing it if their protagonist is to satisfy the reader. Diamond is difficult to work with, clumsy, accident-prone, but has integrity. This is why he has survived 14 books.
JKP: Diamond faced a variety of difficulties during the first books in this series, not the least of which were that he had to find a way back into law enforcement, after storming out of CID, and later lost his beloved wife, Stephanie, to a sniper. But lately he has had an easier time of it. He has a regular girlfriend and seems to have curbed his temper to some degree. Did you always want the man to find a peaceful groove and settle in?
PL: In the first book, I had the unnerving experience of being sidelined by my own creation. At the point when he resigned, it was borne in on me that this strong personality wouldn’t take a reprimand for an offense he felt was excusable. So he quit. I was left with the difficulty first of solving the mystery in a way that still brought him credit, and later of getting him back into the police. It took two books to do it.
The murder of his wife was devastating for him and many of my readers. I’m often asked how I could have done this. I answer that...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue