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Skeleton Hill (Peter Diamond #10)

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 258 ratings · 44 reviews

“Peter Lovesey is the real deal. A top master of the police procedural British subgenre, he's an ace at spinning out teasingly slow plot revelations . . . crisp prose and humane characterizations.”—The Seattle Times

Praise for the Peter Diamond series:

“Catnip for enthusiasts of the classic puzzler.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[Lovesey] has no peer in presenting a traditional mystery...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published September 1st 2009 by Soho Crime (first published January 1st 2009)

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Jan 07, 2013 Ed Clinton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: detective-fiction

This is a police procedural written by Peter Lovesey. The book is the tenth in the Peter Diamond series. Diamond is an overweight, out-of-shape, irascible detective who always presents as a determined figure fighting the bureaucracy to get the mystery solved.

These books are excellent, among the very best detective stories ever written. Lovesey always designs a complicated plot with twists and turns that follows in a logical fashion. Diamond has plenty of flaws and comes across as someone you wou...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Cameling rated it 3 of 5 stars

During a re-enactment of the English Civil War on a hill, 2 Cavaliers who were among those downed by the Roundheads snuck off to an old oak tree to sneak in a couple of beers from a six-pack that had been hidden prior to the battle. In the process of searching for additional cans of beer, they find an old bone, which appears to be a femur. They bury it back, thinking it belongs to a skeleton of an actual soldier during the battle and go on their merry way. Wouldn't you know, a dog being walked b...more During a re-enactment of the English Civil War on a hill, 2 Cavaliers who were among those downed by the Roundheads snuck off to an old oak tree to sneak in a couple of beers from a six-pack that had been hidden prior to the battle. In the process of searching for additional cans of beer, they find an old bone, which appears to be a femur. They bury it back, thinking it belongs to a skeleton of an actual soldier during the battle and go on their merry way. Wouldn't you know, a dog being walked by his owner finds the disturbed ground and digs around, finds the bone and brings it to his owner, who decides to call the police. As the crime scene team get busy, a headless skeleton is uncovered.

In another part of Bath though, an apparently homeless man is found dead on the hill, seemingly having struck his head on a boulder.

Nothing immediately ties these 2 incidents together and the head of CID isn't even convinced that any crimes have taken place at all. However, our unfit and cranky Inspector Peter Diamond, more for want of something meaty to chew on, does manage to find slivers of evidence that the skeleton is not as ancient as everyone had assumed, and that starts his task force on locating the identity of the headless skeleton.

As the identity of the dead man is finally uncovered as a history professor in Bristol, but also someone who participated in the re-enactment, our tenacious Inspector Diamond heads down to Bristol to supervise the local task force there, much to their disgruntlement.

Trying to find clues to these 2 murders stretches even the creativity and imagination of Inspector Diamond and as the 2 task forces reach out for any straw they can find. But through the proverbial haystacks, they do manage to gradually uncover a few meagre clues and at that point, things start trotting along at a fair clip.

What makes this series interesting is not just the well developed characters but all the background descriptions about the setting and historical information pertinent to location and sociology of the times.(less)

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Feb 20, 2010 Kathleen Hagen added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-audio-books, 2010-mysteries

Skeleton Hill, by Peter Lovesey, B-plus, narrated by Simon Prebble, Produced by BBC Audio-America, downloaded from audible.com

This is my first Peter Diamond mystery. I will read more of these. In this one, Superintendent Diamond is called to Bath when a skeleton is found-that of a female, who died about 20 years ago, and who is headless. The skeleton had been found by two men who were engaging in a civil war reenactment of a 350-year-old battle between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers. The two f...more

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Sep 25, 2009 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-crime-detection

Lovesey, Peter. SKELETON HILL – A Peter Diamond Investigation. (2009). ****. Lovesey has a marvelous imagination and a superb way of telling a story. His character, Peter Diamond, is now a dinosaur within the CID of Bath, England, and is faced with a double murder separated by twenty years. I’ve missed a few of the Diamond books in the process that I’ll have to make up for, but this is a stand-alone novel in the best sense. On Lansdown Hill, just outside of Bath, a re-enactment of the battle bet...more Lovesey, Peter. SKELETON HILL – A Peter Diamond Investigation. (2009). ****. Lovesey has a marvelous imagination and a superb way of telling a story. His character, Peter Diamond, is now a dinosaur within the CID of Bath, England, and is faced with a double murder separated by twenty years. I’ve missed a few of the Diamond books in the process that I’ll have to make up for, but this is a stand-alone novel in the best sense. On Lansdown Hill, just outside of Bath, a re-enactment of the battle between the Royalists and the Roundheads in the great English Civil War has just taken place. Two of the infantrymen, who are playing dead manage to sneak off to have a beer – hidden by one of them under the roots of a long-ago upturned tree. There they discover a bone, assumed by them to be of animal origin, but later is suspected to be human. One of the enacting soldiers is a historian from the university close by whose academic interest is history. He decides to go back after the re-enactment and do a little further digging. He suspects that the bone might be from one of the original combatants in 1643 and that he could get a paper out of it. It turns out that the bone, a femur, is from the body of a woman who was buried about twenty years ago in the soft dirt left from the over-turning of the tree. All the bones are there but the head is missing. The history professor then disappears. He is found later in among the gravestones close to the scene of the discovered woman, still on Lansdown Hill, but dead from a severe blow to the head. Chief Inspector Diamond takes over both cases and somehow intuitively decides that the two cases of murder are related. We are carried through the police investigation and the daily toil involved in gathering evidence along with the sharp insight provided by Diamond and the rest of his staff. Again, Lovesey provides us with lots of clues and lets us help develop the case along with his cast of characters – all extremely well drawn. Recommended.(less)

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Jul 06, 2010 Linda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-crime

A pair of English Civil War reenactors discovers evidence of a decades old murder buried beneath a fallen tree on Lansdown Hill, site of a famous battle. The skeleton is headless, and some painstaking investigation reveals the victim to be a twenty year old Ukrainian immigrant escaping the sex trafficking trade in London. Two weeks after the exhumation, one of the reenactors is found dead in a Landsdown cemetery, his head bashed in.

What follows is a case lead by old pro Peter Diamond, who insist...more

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Nov 15, 2009 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-england

A history professor disappears after participating in an English Civil War battle reenactment just outside of Bath. Then a dog finds a skeleton leg in the same area. The leg is probably a remnant of the battle, police think--until forensics tells them differently. Now Peter Diamond and his team have a cold-case murder to solve, and a missing person to find. Diamond is sure--or wants to be sure--that the cases are linked, because he's reluctant to give up either one. The hunt takes him from a bro...more

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Nov 07, 2009 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of those authors I tend to forget about until they come out with a new book. I have read a few of these in the past, but it was a while ago and I had forgotten all about him. This is a good mystery; bones are discovered under an uprooted tree during a battle re-enactment--discovered by 2 participants retrieving beer stashed there. One of the men ends up murdered, and it isn't certain that the bones and the murdered man have anything to do with each other. Are they 2 separate cases? Or one ca...more

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Mar 01, 2011 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

During a recreation of an English Civil War battle outside Bath, Rupert Hope, an academic playing a cavalier, and another participant discover a human femur while on a beer break. The bone turns out to be part of a headless skeleton buried some 25 years earlier. After someone murders Rupert, Diamond wonders whether his murder and the skeleton are connected. A zipper found near the skeleton leads to a link with London's Ukrainian community and the plight of the numerous young emigrant women from...more

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Mar 27, 2013 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. THIS SUMMARY/REVIEW WAS COPIED FROM OTHER SOURCES AND IS USED ONLY AS A REMINDER OF WHAT THE BOOK WAS ABOUT FOR MY PERSONAL INTEREST. ANY PERSONAL NOTATIONS ARE FOR MY RECOLLECTION ONLY

A pair of English Civil War reenactors discovers evidence of a decades old murder buried beneath a fallen tree on Lansdown Hill, site of a famous battle. The skeleton is headless, and some painstaking investigation reveals the victim to be a twenty year old Ukrainian immigrant escaping the sex trafficking trade in...more THIS SUMMARY/REVIEW WAS COPIED FROM OTHER SOURCES AND IS USED ONLY AS A REMINDER OF WHAT THE BOOK WAS ABOUT FOR MY PERSONAL INTEREST. ANY PERSONAL NOTATIONS ARE FOR MY RECOLLECTION ONLY

A pair of English Civil War reenactors discovers evidence of a decades old murder buried beneath a fallen tree on Lansdown Hill, site of a famous battle. The skeleton is headless, and some painstaking investigation reveals the victim to be a twenty year old Ukrainian immigrant escaping the sex trafficking trade in London. Two weeks after the exhumation, one of the reenactors is found dead in a Landsdown cemetery, his head bashed in.

What follows is a case lead by old pro Peter Diamond, who insists that the two crimes are connected and doggedly pursues the truth in spite of strong discouragement from his boss. Author Lovesey's pacing and plotting is superb, his characters genuine and likable, including the bad guys. Inspector Diamond has recently lost his wife, and is provided here with material for a budding, if not wildly romantic, new relationship with a smart, sassy woman (close to his own age, even!). Lovesey also makes good use of his settings, evoking a realistic sense of time and place. As in other series fiction, perhaps it's better to read the entries in chronological order, but I haven't done that, and find that Skeleton Hill holds its own as a standalone.

So it ends up that an old surveyor, a member of a group that watches over Lambourne Hill is the murderer of the reenactor . His daughter, a veterinarian, is a party to the murder and also a party to the murder of a Russian prostitute who happened to watch the old guy and his daughter steal his horse from his stables trailer. They did this because the injured thoroughbred was to be sold but due to sterility the transaction couldn't take place. They stole the horse from the trailer, killed it, hid it in a hidden disused grotto, and made a claim for insurance that gave them far less than if the sale occurred (for stud) but better than nothing. The poor former prostitute girl was hoping to get a job at a stable and was killed because she saw the horse-knapping. It was a good suspenseful story that I guessed at who the killer might have been but had to wait until the last page to find out why I was right. The main detective was Peter Diamond.(less)

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Jul 16, 2012 Trish rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, british, fiction, mysteries, series

I skipped a few in this series because it is not very easy for me to find all the books in order. But I discovered when I picked up this latest in the series that Diamond is getting old. He always had a little of the old man about him, but in the earlier books I've read he was really at the edge of his skills and in a profession where experience counts for something. Now, several books later, he takes no little pride in not participating in the technology revolution, though I'm sure it just mask...more

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Jun 11, 2010 rabbitprincess rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to rabbitprincess by: the Globe and Mail

Shelves: mags-and-newspapers-and-blogs, bibliotheque, 2010

I wasn't really expecting overly much from this book, so I can't say I was disappointed with what I found. This is a police procedural in the vein of Rebus or Banks, except that Diamond doesn't have quite the same forceful presence or commanding knowledge of music that the former two detectives possess (especially Banks with his music). There's a 20-year-old skeleton and then a more recent corpse, both tied in with a historical site where a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers is re-enacted....more I wasn't really expecting overly much from this book, so I can't say I was disappointed with what I found. This is a police procedural in the vein of Rebus or Banks, except that Diamond doesn't have quite the same forceful presence or commanding knowledge of music that the former two detectives possess (especially Banks with his music). There's a 20-year-old skeleton and then a more recent corpse, both tied in with a historical site where a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers is re-enacted. It was this angle that intrigued me, but it wasn't really the main focus of the investigation. Diamond's investigation followed a reasonable path, but I felt like the end kind of slipped away from me. Granted, I was reading this on the bus and I read fairly quickly, so I could have missed the key "epiphany moment" that prompts Diamond to arrest the person he does. And if the last chapter had not been there I would have been seriously dissatisfied with the final interrogation.

One thing I must comment on is the copious historical background shunted in as dialogue. I haven't read a book with that much expository dialogue in a while and it was very jarring. I'm not sure how much of it was relevant, but I did start skimming those parts. However, I was amused when one of the characters Diamond interviews, a clothing expert, starts going on about these historical garments and she essentially shuts herself up because she can see Diamond is not very interested. Diamond was quite the reader stand-in there.

Also correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't police officers supposed to sign nondisclosure agreements or something when they join up? Because if they are, Diamond really violates his with his girlfriend or whatever she is, Paloma. He'll meet up with her in the pub in the evening and then happily disclose tons of details about the case and where they're planning to go for leads and stuff, and here she is cheerfully offering advice and commenting on what they've found. Not exactly the smoothest of moves, Diamond.

That and the somewhat flatness of some of the other characters aside, this was a harmless enough novel to spend a couple of days with on the bus. I don't regret reading it but will not bother seeking out others in the series.(less)

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Sep 11, 2010 Ron Chicaferro rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you've read and liked any of the Peter Diamond series you'll love Skeleton Hill. The protaganist, Chief Inspector Peter Diamond, may be older, overweight and lacking any computer or cell phone skills but he sure has honed his crime-solving abilities. Diamond's a straight forward, no nonsense copper. The reader will feel like part of the investigative team in this fast-paced police procedural. If you like British mysteries you won't be dissapointed with any of the Peter Lovesey books.

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Jul 29, 2011 Laurie added it

Just the thing for a lazy weekend recovering from a busy week, complete with civil war reenactors (since it's a british mystery, they're not rebel and union, but roundheads and cavaliers), racehorses, and Ukrainian prostitutes. The older supervisor and his clever young detectives are engaging, you can practically taste the bangers and mash and the ale.

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Dec 12, 2009 Krob rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked Peter Diamond, the detective. He is grumpy and over-weight and a workaholic. I always that kind of person. The story revolves around war re-enactors who find a skeleton while they are sneaking out from a re-enacted battle to have a beer. It is solved bit by bit by good police work. If you like police procedurals, you'll like this book

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Jul 29, 2011 Catherine Woodman added it

I usually love this series--but this one I had a hard time getting through. Maybe it was me, because the plot seemed competent enough--just not good engaging characters, and even Peter Diamond wasn't as likable as he usually is to me (in his slightly abrasive way).

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Jan 31, 2013 Rog Harrison rated it 3 of 5 stars

Peter Lovesey has written many books over the years and I have liked most of them. Peter Diamond is an odd character but has become more believable over the series. This is a fascinating book and I really could not figure out where it was going.

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Jul 30, 2012 Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was enjoyable, but as the series goes, not one of my favorites. I think the thing that bugged me most was the fact that the woman he is dating had a major traumatic event in her life and in this book she is unrealistically normal.

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Apr 23, 2013 Nina Levison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really enjoyed this detective story as it was centred around Bath, an area of the country I know well as I spent my teenage years living nearby. The story kept me guessing who the killer was till the end and it was a surprise.

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Jun 30, 2011 Lesley rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very good read as Peter Lovesey's books always are. Superintendent Peter Diamond is on top form. These bools are of particular interest to me as I know the area they are set in (Bath) very well.

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Jul 27, 2010 Mary Kay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Series protagonist Peter Diamond finds himself embroiled in two murder cases: a decapitated skeleton from 20 years ago & a history prof who is killed after a Civil War (British, not U.S.)reenactment.

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Aug 16, 2012 Connie Wisniewski rated it 3 of 5 stars

It was a fun book. I love English detective stories. This had a lot of history, and also I discovered information about horses. This is the first Lovesey books I have read, and it won't be the last.

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Jan 18, 2010 Papalodge rated it 4 of 5 stars

Peter Diamond amusing. Finally using cell phone, quirky about driving, trying to cross over to 21st century. Supporting staff enjoyable. Victims interesting, suspects fun.

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Mar 07, 2013 Chris Wright rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good enough to want to read more of the series. Light and entertaining. Certainly not the deepest plots nor the most gripping characters but overall an enjoyable read.

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Apr 14, 2012 Ambar Parashar rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: detective-mystery-thriller

As a investigator protagonist i am disappointed by Peter diamond.This novel is below average,starting was promising as a but as story unfolded author made it lowpoint.

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Sep 29, 2010 Gail Dedrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of life's pleasures is a good mystery and if it is a police procedural, set in England, with a backdrop of History it is all the sweeter.

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Sep 23, 2009 Monica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Look out! He's using his cell phone.
Always a fun break to catch up with Peter Diamond as he solves a challenging case.

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Jan 19, 2010 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Peter Lovesey brings back Peter Diamond, hooray. If you're a fan you know what it means, and if not, become one.

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May 19, 2011 Narnia rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was just so bland. The ending was so obvious. The best part has to be all the Ukrainian references

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Jun 02, 2012 Linden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another Peter Diamond book with a background of middle ages battle re-enactments and good plotting.

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Jul 12, 2011 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

A great mystery, well written and plotted. Involves civil war enacters (the English one.)

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About Peter Lovesey

Peter (Harmer) Lovesey (born 1936 in Whitton, Middlesex) is a British writer of historical and contemporary crime novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath. Lovesey's novels and stories mainly fall into the category of entertaining puzzlers in the "Golden...more

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Skeleton Hill (Peter Diamond #10)

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