Peter Lovesey's Peter Diamond mysteries have been one of my favorite series, and the author introduces a new series with the main character Henrietta Mallin. This book seems at first to be a light version of the author's writing, but after slowly catching on to the hints - I realized it's a homage to Agatha Christie. There is an ensemble of characters that slowly get knocked off, and a surprising ending. Well done, well done! ( )

Peter Lovesey is one of our most prolific crime writers, having produced three long separate series in addition to numerous standalone volumes. In the 1970s, he wrote a series of novels featuring the Victorian detective, Sergeant Cribb, which were successfully adapted for television. He later moved on to an amusing set of books featuring the Prince of Wales before he succeeded to the throne as Edward VII. More recently he has tended to write about Superintendent Peter Diamond, the gruff, pragmatic head of CID in Bath, combining elements of the traditional whodunit with the grittier conventions of the police procedural.

His books all succeed in delivering watertight plots against a backdrop of gentle humour, and Lovesey revels in ridiculing and puncturing pomposity wherever he can I am disappointed that he has never enjoyed the mainstream commercial success that his books so patently deserve. I am also surprised that the Diamond novels have not been snapped up for television, as the Bath setting would have similar visual appeal, and international marketability, to the Oxford of Morse and Lewis.

The Circle is not one of the Diamond series, although he does feature very fleetingly. The investigation is (eventually) conducted by Chief Inspector Henrietta (“Hen”) Mallin, an associate and friend of Diamond’s who works in West Sussex, who finds herself faced with what rapidly develops into a series of murders, all through arson, around the scenic Sussex city of Chichester. The victims are all associated with the Chichester Literary Circle, a group of aspiring writers who meet regularly to swap ideas and read each other passages from their latest work. The first victim is a local publisher who had recently attended a meeting of the Circle, and whose house is set alight one evening, with him inside it.

Lovesey puts forward some cleverly drawn characters among the Circle, all of whom have markedly different literary tastes and styles, and he gently satirises their shared propensity to fall into the clichés attendant upon their respective genres. The setting of Chichester gently reverberates throughout the book – this might almost be a tract from the local tourist board.

Taken all together, this is a very enjoyable and entertaining book. ( )

I checked thisout since the next in the Peter Diamond series was checked out, and I prefer to read a series in order. This was not quite as up to the mark as The Last Detective, but still a great mystery. ( )

I checked thisout since the next in the Peter Diamond series was checked out, and I prefer to read a series in order. This was not quite as up to the mark as The Last Detective, but still a great mystery. ( )

I checked thisout since the next in the Peter Diamond series was checked out, and I prefer to read a series in order. This was not quite as up to the mark as The Last Detective, but still a great mystery. ( )