Diamond Solitaire

Out of work after an insubordination incident and reduced to security guard duty at Harrods, ex-detective Peter Diamond's career appears to be over. When a silent, abandoned Japanese girl is found in the store after closing hours, Diamond adopts her investigation informally, convinced by the signs of autism that she has been systematically used and discarded. The trail leads from London to New York and into a world of criminal exploitation, and Diamond's unofficial inquiry runs ahead of official channels precisely because his outsider status gives him room to operate that the police cannot afford.

Simon Prebble narrates the second Peter Diamond mystery with the dry English intelligence that suits Lovesey's Bath-based series, giving Diamond's reduced circumstances a wry dignity and his dogged pursuit of justice for an inarticulate child its proper emotional weight. His voice work with the Japanese sequences handles the cultural difference without condescension. At just over ten and a half hours, Diamond Solitaire is one of the series' most distinctive plots, and Prebble's performance makes it one of its best audio experiences.