Those enviable few readers just discovering the devilishly clever, razor-sharp puzzle mysteries of crime fiction legend Peter Lovesey are faced with a difficult question: What should I read first from an author called a “master” (The Wall Street Journal), “the real deal” (Seattle Times), “a nimble standard-bearer for the whodunit tradition” (Richmond Times-Dispatch), and “the reigning king of British crime fiction” (Deadly Pleasures)? An author who is among only three other living writers to be honored by both the venerable Crime Writers’ Association and Mystery Writers of America with a Lifetime Achievement Award?

Complicate the decision further by adding that the Chicago Tribune has said that his 30 plus critically acclaimed mysteries are “so beautifully constructed and cleanly written that they could be used as textbooks in a crime writing course” (Chicago Tribune).

In her intro to The Last Detective, author Louise Penny makes the case for starting at the beginning. That is, the first in Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series set in Bath, England. Of The Last Detective she says:

Welcome to The Last Detective, a novel that changed the face of detective fiction when it was released in 1991. It broke every template, every tradition, every “rule” of the genre. Indeed, not only does Peter Lovesey break the rules with this book, so does his brilliant new protagonist. To say that Superintendent Peter Diamond, of the Bath Regional Police, is unruly would be a gross understatement.

Peter Diamond is impatient, belligerent, cunning, insight­ful, foul, laugh-out-loud funny, and so engaging that this wondrous book went on to spawn a series. The Peter Dia­mond books have won major awards for crime fiction internationally, hit bestseller lists, and inspired a generation of crime writers who saw that a novel can be a police proce­dural, a traditional mystery, an exploration of social issues. It can be literary, terrifying, funny, and comforting all at once.

  And it all started with the book that you hold in your hands.