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    Down Among the Dead Men
    Down Among the Dead Men
    Down Among the Dead Men
    Audiobook10 hours

    Down Among the Dead Men

    Written by Peter Lovesey

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In a Sussex town on the south coast of England, a widely disliked art teacher at a posh private girls' school disappears without explanation. None of her students miss her boring lessons, especially since her replacement is a devilishly hunky male teacher with a fancy car. But then her name shows up on a police missing persons list. What happened to Miss Gibbon, and why does no one seem to care? Meanwhile, detective Peter Diamond finds himself in Sussex, much against his wishes. His irritating and often obtuse supervisor, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, has made Diamond accompany her on a Home Office internal investigation. A Sussex detective has been suspended for failing to link DNA evidence of a relative to a seven-year-old murder case-a bad breach of ethics. Diamond is less than thrilled to be heading out on a road trip with his boss to investigate a fellow officer, but he becomes much more interested in the case when he realizes who the suspended officer is-an old friend, and not a person he knows to make mistakes. As Diamond asks questions, he begins to notice unsettling connections between the cold case and the missing art teacher. Could the two mysteries be connected? How many other area disappearances have gone unnoticed and uninvestigated? Diamond and his hapless supervisor have stumbled into a web of related crimes. Will Diamond be able to disentangle them?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 7, 2015
    ISBN9781501974632
    Down Among the Dead Men
    Author

    Peter Lovesey

    Peter Lovesey is a British writer of detective fiction. His work has won many awards, most notably the CWA Gold and Silver Daggers, the Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Macavity, Barry and Anthony Awards.

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    Reviews for Down Among the Dead Men

    4/5

    98 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I thought the first few chapters were boring, but after the mystery finally kicked in I enjoyed the book.
    • 4/5
      Peter Diamond is assigned to work with Georgina Dallymore in an investigation of an Inspector on suspension for covering up evidence that came about late into a murder case. There focus was to be on Chief Inspector Hen Mallin (a former partner of Diamond’s) but Diamond manages to change the direction of the case to investigate the latest case that Mallin was working which involved an inordinate number of missing persons. Lots of personal conflict between the officers because of political correctness.
    • 4/5
      I have been reading the Peter Diamond series for years now, and I was looking forward to this 15th book in this wonderful series. I expected to enjoy it as I do all the books, but there was an added surprise when I found out that Mr. Lovesey's other protagonist from a just as wonderful series, was in this book too - Peter Diamond and Hen Mallin together again! This book is as well-written and funny and tricky as all the other ones in the series. Diamond is enlisted to go with his rather spinny supervisor, Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore to Sussex to investigate an officer's misconduct. Not only does Peter not want to spend days in Georgina's company, but he does not relish investigating a fellow officer. He is even more dismayed when he finds out that the errant officer is his old friend and colleague, Chief Inspector Hen Mallin. When he and Georgina start investigating, they find a lot of troubling information. There are a lot of missing persons that have disappeared and never been seen again, and this is all along the coast, and there are even missing people in the town of Chichester where they are staying. Most recently an art teacher from the local high school has gone missing too. Peter and Hen do some digging on their own and discover a link to organized crime. If you haven't read Peter Diamond, I highly recommend this series, and I envy you because you have an extremely wonderful backlist to catch up on. Lovesey's books are a real treat!
    • 5/5
      Peter Diamond's boss Georgina Dallymore has been asked by colleague Archie Hahn to investigate corruption charges against one of his DCIs. Hen Mallin has already been suspended and Hahn wants to know what he should do next. He is expecting Dallymore to really rubber stamp his decision at the same time as making what appears to be an impartial investigation.Georgina takes Peter Diamond to Chichester with her to assist in the investigation. She really likes the sound of Dallymore & Diamond, detectives, but she lives in false hope if she thinks she can control Peter Diamond. What she doesn't realise is how he manipulates her. Instead of focussing on Mallin's lapse Peter tries to work out how the body came to be in the boot of the BMW and that leads him to the real cause of why Hen Mallin has been suspended.There are lots of tongue-in-cheek moments in this novel which made it a delight to read. Even the title is tarred with an ironic brush.And I see there is another Peter Diamond title to look for this year.
    • 5/5
      I found that the plot was more complicated than it really needed to be and involved not only murder, but some disappearances, some drugs, as well as students and teachers at a local girls' school. It's listed as a "police procedural" but it is also a book about relationships. I hated Peter's superior, Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore. She's an overbearing individual that is constantly on a self-proclaimed pedestal when it comes to her rank and doesn't let her underlings ever forget exactly who is in charge here. She spent the majority of the book bossing Peter around as well as anyone else that came into her view. If she makes no effort to conceal that she certainly disapproves of Peter's sometimes "unorthodox" ways, she is more than happy to employ his talents as a detective to boost her "look how good I look" record. Peter has no desire to make the trip to the school, especially under the thumb of his irritating superior. The saving grace here is that the exchange between them is comical at times. The story slipped off into the realm of slapstick comedy when Peter was faced with, not weapons of mass destruction, but weapons of the household variety...like a frying pan and a chainsaw. The mystery is excellent, and the story is well told. You could describe it as entertaining as well as suspenseful and well worth the reading time.
    • 5/5
      Down Among The Dead Men (2015) (Diamond #15) by Peter Lovesey. Ah! to be a young car thief with all the latest electronic lock picking devices. Danny has just paid for these new tools of his trade and can’t wait to try them out, but can’t find the car he wants. Tired of looking for days, he retreats to his local for a pint and a pity party when, to his great joy, the car of his dreams is deposited in a car park just across the way. When the coast is clear, Danny scarpers across the way, immediately opening the car with one device and starting it with the other. Riding down the roadway thinking blissful thoughts of his future thefts, he is pulled over by the police. Still calm, knowing no one could have called them about the theft, Danny knows he will be on his way in just a moment or two. But when the truck is opened and the body is found, the smile leaves Danny’s face.Several years pass and Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond gets a new case. He and the boss, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore are going away together on a tricky assignment. There is a possible case of police corruption. The niece of a Detective Chief Inspector is implicated through DNA evidence with the previously mentioned stolen car. Sad sack Danny has always said he stole the car but didn’t kill anyone. It is up to Diamond and Dallymore to discover just what did happen.If you have been following the Diamond series you will recognize Diamond’s old comrade Hen Mallin, but you can read this book as a stand alone also. She is accused of avoiding evidence of her niece’s involvement years ago and is now suspended awaiting the findings of the new investigation.Did I mention the Priory Park School, an exclusive girl’s school and the disappearance of the art teacher? She is missing and only a very few of her students are concerned. The new teacher, a real hunk, has the seventeen year old art students enthralled with desirous dreams.Lies abound. The dreams of the young women tend to confuse the reality of their relationship with the beautiful, and rich, new art teacher. And the police have their own set of lies and deceptions as well, something that Diamond has to deal with to save both Hen and his boss. You might wonder how all this is connected, which is the point of the story. Mr. Lovesey has once again plotted an evil little scheme with surprising twists and turns, but with a fair surprise ending. All the evidence has been provided, it is up to you to beat the detectives to the result. Yet another in this long series and, as per the usual, a delight in both the characters and the plot.
    • 3/5
      A car thief, steals a BMW, using new radio-interference technology.... As he's driving to get new plates he is stopped by the police who have been looking for the car, as it had been reported stolen several days earlier.... Opening the boot the thief and the police are shocked to find the body of a well liked local gardener in the boot.A rather unpopular art teacher goes missing, the person who stole the car originally goes missing, and it has been reported that many (many) small-time crooks have gone missing as well. The latter, no one but a local policewoman has noticed; and when she does notice she is suspended by the administration for not following up on a lead which incriminates her niece. Assistant Chief Constable Dallymore (PITA) is assigned the case and in turn calls on Detective Peter Diamond to assist her. For Diamond, Dallymore is the proverbial thorn-in-his-side; bossy, arrogant, with the tendency to overlook the most important nuances that will solve a case.There are many sub-plots and although the story was interesting, Dallymore was an awful snobby, condescending, pompous arse; which was why I took this down a star.The ends tied up quite nicely....
    • 4/5
      Almost two years ago I received this book as a Christmas present. It finally made it to the top of my TBR pile. Now I'm wondering where Peter Lovesey has been all my life. Louise Penny blurbed on the front "Peter Diamond is impatient, belligerent, cunning, insightful, foul, laugh-out-loud funny." That could almost be a description of one of my other favourite fictional detectives, John Rebus, but Peter Diamond is based out of Bath, in England whereas Rebus is a Scot and proud of it.For this book Peter Diamond is voluntold by his superior, ACC Georgina Dallymore, to assist her in a special assignment based in Sussex. A police detective there is on suspension for not following up on some DNA evidence that could exonerate a convicted felon. Danny Stapleton was a car thief and seven years ago he had the misfortune to steal an already stolen car that had a body in the trunk. When he was stopped by the police while driving the car he thought he might get charged with car theft but the stakes escalated when the police discovered the corpse in the boot. Danny has sworn that he had no knowledge of the body and certainly no involvement with murder but he was convicted of being an accessory and given a life sentence. DNA evidence showed there were two other people in the car besides the rightful owner but at the time of the trial they did not have a match in the database. However, three years ago two women were arrested after a fight and DNA taken matched one of them to one of the samples of DNA in the car. This finding was went to the inspector in charge of the original investigation but because the woman involved was the niece of the inspector it was never pursued. An anonymous letter sent to headquarters resulted in the inspector being suspended and a police misconduct investigation was launched. Dallymore and Diamond were brought in as impartial outside investigators. Diamond doesn't much like the idea of investigating a fellow officer but when he finds out the person is someone he knows and respects he is happy to stay on the case. He suspects that this allegation was brought to light now because the officer was looking into a number of missing persons cases along the Sussex coast. If he can crack the missing persons case perhaps he can restore the reputation of his colleague.Diamond is all those things Louise Penny said but he is also empathetic and honourable. I liked him a lot and I think this means I've found another mystery series to follow. Yikes!
    • 4/5
      My first Peter Lovesey book and it won't be the last. Devoured it almost in one day; I would have given it a 5 star rating in its genre and for its impeccably articulated plot that contained not a few surprises. Much fun.
    • 4/5
      When Peter Diamond is called in to investigate another officer he becomes involved in a girls school and an artists' community, and has to spend more time with his female superior than he would care to. Good humoured writing, well-drawn characters, and an increasing puzzle as a teacher then a pupil go missing.
    • 4/5
      Tthis a jolly good mystery although once again Lovesey telegraphs the ending. But that' does not harm the tale at all for the ending is where the juicy parts are found. Perhaps Lovesey purposely telegraphed the ending in order to make the real ending more delicious.
    • 3/5
      A nightmare discovery in the boot of a stolen BMW plunges car thief Danny Stapleton into the worst trouble of his life. What links his misfortune to the mysterious disappearance of an art teacher at a private school for girls in Chichester? Orders from above push Peter Diamond of Bath CID into investigating a police corruption case in the Chichester force, and he soon finds himself reluctantly dealing with spirited schoolgirls, eccentric artists and his formidable old colleague, Hen Mallin.After Danny Stapleton steals a BMW he is shocked when the cops pull him over on his way to a dubious car dealer to change the registration plates. Unfortunately for Danny it turns out the car he lifted was already stolen, and worse than that, there is also a dead body in the trunk. Danny might protest as much as his wants, but he is looking at a sentence for murder or in best case accessory to murder. 15 years later while Danny is spending his jail sentence an anonymous letter arrives at Sussex police hinting that the investigating officer might have mishandled the case to protect a relative of hers.Asisstant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore is asked by the Sussex police to investigate this possible case of police corruption and she wants Superintendent Peter Diamond to accompany her.Soon the original crime turns out to be one in a series of disappearances with links to organised crime. Diamond and Dallymore have to race to unmask the real killer while they cannot trust anyone, not even their own colleagues.Meanwhile a new arts teacher arrives at a private school of girls in Chichester. The girls immediately go crazy for the handsome man who drives a sports car and lives in a manor house. But is he really who he claims to be and what happened to his predecessor who just disappeared without a trace?Down Among The Dead Man starts out really strong and about the first half of the book is immensely entertaining. Peter Diamond has never gotten along particularly well with his boss and now having to work together they get caught up in some amusing situations. The funniest scene occurs perhaps when Diamond and Dallymore pretend to be painters and are confronted with a nude male model.Once the times comes however to answer all our questions the book does so in a not very original way. I was expecting something far more sinister than the actual solution which is really a bit of a let-down after the suspenseful investigationAnother solid entry in the Peter-Diamond-series, but not quite as good as earlier books from the author.
    • 4/5
      Peter Lovesey’s series of novels featuring the irascible Superintendent Peter Diamond is marvellous, and I have always wondered why it hasn’t received greater public acknowledgement. With the glorious setting of Bath and Diamond’s often comical idiosyncrasies, the books also seem tailor made for television adaptation.As it happens, the action in this latest volume moves away from Bath to the almost equally photogenic city of Chichester where Peter Diamond accompanies his Assistant Chief Constable, Georgina Dalrymple, to conduct a disciplinary review of an officer whose has been suspended following allegations of misconduct relating to a murder investigation seven years previously . Readers of earlier books in the series will be aware that ACC Dalrymple and Peter Diamond have markedly different approaches to police work: he is an old fashioned ‘thief taker’, while she is more concerned with meeting targets, public relations and political accountability.Lovesey is a master at constructing plausible yet engaging plots, and he delivers again here. Diamond and Dalrymple meet predictable resistance from the suspended officer’s colleagues, but also find themselves being drawn into a current investigation into the disappearance of several underworld figures. They also become involved, to Diamond’s delight but Dalrymple’s extreme displeasure, in the investigation into the disappearance of a local schoolgirl.Lovesey succeeds in blending a police procedural novel with a ‘vintage’ crime novel, harvesting the best aspects of both genre without compromising his plot or characters. This was very entertaining, as are all of Lovesey’s books.
    • 3/5
      Well...it was good, I always love Diamond. But...Dallymore's character, and Diamond's "management" of her was over-the-top. She's head of a police department, but she's silly, vain, and easily fooled. Bitchy and aggressive, but not assertive. She felt like a cartoon. I also thought the boat guys thing was pure coincidence...more like Nancy Drew than an adult mystery. And they apparently rented...oh, wait...owned the boat. Did no one proof this??? Yet - Diamond is always compelling, even though this stuff irked me as I was reading.
    • 4/5
      First of the Peter Diamond investigations that I have read. Enjoyable and entertaining. Would recommend.
    • 5/5
      Peter Lovesey is back with a winner in this fifteenth Peter Diamond mystery. What better than to pair up Diamond with his superior officer-- a woman he has no use for? Some of my favorite scenes in the book deal with Diamond learning how to conceal crucial pieces of his investigation from his hapless partner, and readers can easily feel sympathy for him each time he has to stop what he's doing to stroke his boss's ego. Even "Dallymore and Diamond" has the ring of a vaudeville act whose name appears at the bottom of the bill. It's not a situation that Diamond relishes. At. All.Another thing to make Diamond's job more difficult is the fact that he has to keep his friendship with the suspended officer, "Hen" Mallin, a secret from his boss and everyone else. Mallin has appeared in other Lovesey mysteries (The Circle, The Headhunters and The House Sitter), and I enjoyed her character so much that I'll be looking these two up in order to read them.Down Among the Dead Men also concerns missing persons, a handsome young art teacher who has set all the hearts at a posh girls' school aflutter, Saturday meetings for a group of local artists, and full moon parties. Lovesey does such a good job of portraying all those teenage female hormones that I felt as if I were right in the middle of the action (and wanting to run for my life).There are so many things going on in this book, but I never once felt confused or overloaded. Lovesey has created a very complex puzzle, and I loved how all the various pieces finally slotted into place-- some not exactly in the places I expected. Yes, this is a book in which I often knew "who" but very seldom figured out the "why" or the "how." When you finish reading Down Among the Dead Men, you'll have a smile on your face, knowing that you've just been given a lesson in deduction by a master.
    • 4/5
      Detective Peter Diamond is coerced into accompanying Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore on a fact finding mission to Sussex. Beyond the fact that he doesn’t much care for Georgina and he really doesn’t care to leave Bath where he has plenty to do, he really hates the assignment – to investigate a senior investigating officer at the Chiscester CID after it is learned that she may have buried information in a murder years earlier because one of the suspects is her niece. And if all that isn’t bad enough, he knows, likes, and, more important, respects Henrietta Mallin, the woman they are to investigate.Hen admits that she did, in fact, cover up evidence although she hadn’t thought it was relevant at the time - they already had a viable suspect. But the more Diamond investigates, the more he begins to suspect that all of this is related to a series of disappearances in the area that Hen had been looking into against the orders of the higher-ups. Among the disappeared are an art teacher and a gardener, both people who don’t seem to have any reasons to take off on their own. As Diamond digs deeper, he is convinced that all of these things are linked especially when the niece disappears as well as a young student who had been inquiring about the teacher.Down Among the Dead Men is the 15th entry in author Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond Mystery series and there’s a whole lot going on, most of it seemingly unrelated. However, Lovesey manages to pull all of the disparate strings together quite satisfactorily. Diamond is a likeable character, willing to stroke the often giant egos of his superiors on the force if it will help solve the crime, and his relationship with Georgina is a whole lot of fun to read about. Although the story skips around among various different characters, it never gets muddled and there are plenty of twists and turns to keep the reader guessing. Overall, a very satisfying police procedural.