COP TO CORPSE

How many mistakes can Detective Superintendent Diamond make and still catch the Somerset Sniper?

When the third patrolman in the Bath area is felled by ammo from an assault rifle, Peter Diamond (Stagestruck, 2011, etc.) steps in, landing firmly on the toes of Chief Super Gull, who’s heading up the hunt for the media-dubbed Somerset Sniper. Gull wants total control, but Diamond has his own ideas and hunches, which immediately lead him to Hospital Casualty after a run-in with a motorcyclist, then set him up for an earful from one of the widows, and ultimately cause rifts in his own nick when he starts investigating everyone assigned there in the belief that the sniper might be a cop past or present. After all, the shooter has firearms expertise, knows the officers’ duty rosters, and is a master at eluding discovery by keeping to little-used Bath-area byways. Still, Diamond can find nothing more than random motives to link the three murders and is further perplexed when only the last victim’s possessions include a note stating, “You’re next.” And what is he to make of the blog announcing that three women may have incontrovertible proof that one of their husbands is the Somerset Sniper? 

Nobody but Lovesey could thump out a gritty procedural yet instill Bath with so much charm and history that readers will have to put it on their bucket lists.