Peter Diamond

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath, by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No-one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door-stopping and deduction: he is the last detective.

Peter Diamond is back at Bath CID but doesn't believe his expertise is needed to solve the theft of a rare stamp from the local museum. But when a dead body turns up hours after the stamp, Diamond realizes the victim was a reader of mystery fiction - of the "locked room" variety.

Assuming it to be medieval, Detective Peter Diamond is unimpressed when a severed hand is discovered in a vault. When the hand turns out to be from the early 1980's, Diamond has a thankless investigation to work on.

At the end of a successful court case, DI Peter Diamond is keen to take on another case. When a body is discovered in a park in Bath, he dashes there to take on the case, only to find that the victim is his beloved wife, Steph!