The Last Detective — Peter Lovesey

A CASE THAT'S HARDER THAN A DIAMOND

Lovely Gerry Snoo lived fast and died brutally. Between her meteoric rise as a soap-opera star and the night her body was fished from a lake came a professional setback, a marriage to a slick Bath University professor, and a host of extracurricular relationships.

To Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, the case seems clear-cut. But in a rush to charge the deceased's husband, the oversized detective is confronted with an annoying number of clues and possible killers and motives. As if that's not enough, the department's turned the heat on him for his investigative methods. Not popular at his best, headstrong Diamond is now at his most difficult. His case turning to muck, his career facing an abrupt end, the last dyed-in-the-wool detective has met his match. He doesn't know who killed Gerry Snoo, or why. And worse: he doesn't know how to stop the wrong person from going to prison for the crime.