Battle & burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has ever investigated.

The new Peter Diamond mystery from a master of crime fiction

In the small hours of a Sunday morning in Bath, a policeman on beat duty is shot dead - the 3rd killing of an officer in a matter of weeks. Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the duty inspector, Ken Lockton, seals the crime scene. He discovers the murder weapon in a garden - and is himself attacked and left for dead.

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger, the Barry Award and the Macavity Award. 'Darling, if ever I've met a group of potential murderers anywhere, it's the Bloodhounds.' Thus says one of the members of the Bloodhounds of Bath, a society that meets in a crypt to discuss crime novels. But to their latest recruit, they seem just a gaggle of dotty misfits, until one of them reveals that he is in possession of an immensely valuable stamp, recently stolen from the Postal Museum. Then theft is overtaken by murder when the corpse of one of the Bloodhounds is found in a locked...

Summoned at night, Peter Diamond is collected from his West London flat by two policemen who drive him to bath, where once he headed the murder squad. Out of touch in his retirement, he knows nothing of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years before, he investigated the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist. Now the convicted murderer is at large. Worse, he has already kidnapped the Assistant Chief Constable's daughter. His demand? That the case be re-examined. He will deal only with Diamond. In reopening this matter, Diamond faces a challenge that makes huge demands on his...

Peter Diamond, ex-CID and notoriously difficult to work with, is sacked from his latest job as a security guard in Harrods. Doggedly he turns his sleuthing skills to unravelling the mystery of a little Japanese girl abandoned in London. Naomi, as she is known, exhibits the classic symptoms of an autistic child. Diamond regards her first as a challenge and soon as someone he cares passionately about, and devotes himself to communicating with the child. He is close to a breakthrough when Naomi is abducted to New York. By interpreting clues from drawings left by Naomi, Diamond goes in pursuit...

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath, by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No-one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door-stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit. Eventually, despite disastrous personal consequences, and amongst Bath's rambling buildings and formidable history, the...

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favourite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman's identity is the tattoo of a musical...

Shortlisted for the Barry Award When a woman is shot dead in Bath's Royal Victoria Park, it is Detective Peter Diamond who answers the call first. He is able to identify the victim immediately: his wife, Stephanie. Traumatised and angry for justice, Diamond eventually concedes that he cannot take part in the investigation. But when he realises that his colleagues are spending more time checking his alibi than following up on his suggestions, he decides some unauthorised investigation is needed. Soon he is sifting through the dust of his entire career, unearthing startling and unexpected facts...

When a severed hand from the vault of Bath Abbey Churchyard arrives on Peter Diamond's desk, he is delighted to hear that, far from being a medieval relic, it is from the 1980s. But the vault is part of the house where Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written, and a fanatical American professor is thwarting their investigation. Events are complicated even further when the professor's wife goes missing ...Highly suspicious of the professor, but unable to prove anything, Diamond concentrates on trying to identify the remains, with shocking result. But before he can get any further, the owner of...