MWA Grand Master Peter Lovesey launched his crime writing career with 1970’s Wobble to Death, the first of eight novels featuring Victorian-era Metropolitan Police sergeant Daniel Cribb. In 1991, he introduced curmudgeonly contemporary cop Peter Diamond with The Last Detective, and brings the series to a close with Against the Grain (Soho Crime, Dec.). Lovesey, whose numerous accolades include a lifetime achievement award from the U.K. Crime Writers’ Association, spoke with PW about how both Peters have evolved over the course of 22 whodunits.
What was your original concept for Peter Diamond?
To begin with, he was meant to be a rather sort of outmoded copper getting towards the end of his career, a bit of a dinosaur on the force. I wanted him to be this “last detective,”
because I felt that probably there would not be many who would act as he did, using his old-fashioned methods, in the future. Police work these days involves teamwork. But he was a bit of a loner, and wanted to carry on as a loner. And it was only with reluctance that he turned to his team, and he was rough, and brusque with them.
How has Diamond changed for you over the years?
Originally, I wasn’t considering a series. By the end of The Last Detective he’d resigned from the police. I decided to give him another book at least, because I won the Anthony Award for it, a good incentive to do a little bit more with this character. He’s mellowed quite a lot over the series. He was a difficult man to work with initially, because he played his cards close to his chest. That changed as he became more comfortable with his team, and that comes out especially in this last book, as he reunites
with a former member of his squad, Julie Hargreaves, who had decided to move on after her very good work wasn’t
acknowledged at all by Diamond.
Do you feel that you’ve brought innovations to your genre, and if so, in what way?
I’ve tried to look for different ways of making a realistic and engaging story within the conventions of fair-play mysteries, different from the approaches of authors I’d read, like Agatha Christie. In this book, Diamond actually contrasts his approach to investigating and questioning witnesses with the methods of Hercule Poirot.
How else did you set this book apart?
Against the Grain both gets Diamond away from the offices of the Bath CID [criminal investigation department] into a new environment—the countryside—and also gives him an opportunity to play at being a private detective, rather than an official one, because of the circumstances of the plot, which was a challenge for me as well as him. He’s asked to investigate something on behalf of Julie, but the situation requires him not to reveal that he’s a policeman. He comes across just as a visitor to her village, and, to be convincing in that role, I put him into some tough situations, including helping to deliver a calf. When you’ve written over 20 books in a series, you’re looking for new opportunities for your character.
