Showstopper

When a hit British television production becomes synonymous with catastrophe — falls, fires, drownings, disappearances — the tabloids are quick to cry curse. Peter Diamond isn't so credulous. The gruff Bath detective suspects something far more deliberate behind the string of misfortunes shadowing the cast and crew of Swift, and the deeper he digs, the more the entertainment world's glittering surface begins to crack. Lovesey keeps the stakes personal as well as procedural, wrapping genuine human cost inside a mystery that asks how easily tragedy can be disguised as bad luck.

What Lovesey does brilliantly here is sustain atmosphere without letting it overwhelm the puzzle. His prose is dry, precise, and quietly funny — Diamond's stubborn, old-school instincts rubbing against a world of celebrities and production politics provides a friction the series has always mined with great skill. At book twenty-one, this is a series operating with the confidence of long practice: complex enough to reward careful reading, propulsive enough to make you forget you're supposed to stop after one chapter. Readers already fond of Diamond will feel immediately at home; newcomers will understand why the character has lasted this long.