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A review by gulshanbatra
Diamond Solitaire by Peter Lovesey
3.0
Diamond Solitaire is the second adventure of the larger-than-life Detective-Chief Peter Diamond, and in many ways you can see how the author tried to recreate a story to equate the convoluted puzzle from the first, but didn't quite get it.
The story starts off with a promising premise, but quickly devolves into an aimless and underwhelming plot, with uninteresting twists and turns, some half-interesting but underexplored characters, and a really quick denouement at the very end.
There are elements of an international mystery here, and the author does up some interesting threads but follows up on none of them. The factory accident is wasted, the subsequent car accident is wasted, the long-winded introduction to the pastor is wasted... wouldn't want to reveal much of the plotline but there are more misses.
Worst of all, IMO, was the character of Diamond - he is shown as this bull of a guy, who can literally stare you down into submission, but he too fails - more than once, and there are large swathes of the storyline where Diamond is nowhere near to what's happening.
A sad addition to the series. I will perhaps still look for more in the series, but this one is average, at best.
The story starts off with a promising premise, but quickly devolves into an aimless and underwhelming plot, with uninteresting twists and turns, some half-interesting but underexplored characters, and a really quick denouement at the very end.
There are elements of an international mystery here, and the author does up some interesting threads but follows up on none of them. The factory accident is wasted, the subsequent car accident is wasted, the long-winded introduction to the pastor is wasted... wouldn't want to reveal much of the plotline but there are more misses.
Worst of all, IMO, was the character of Diamond - he is shown as this bull of a guy, who can literally stare you down into submission, but he too fails - more than once, and there are large swathes of the storyline where Diamond is nowhere near to what's happening.
A sad addition to the series. I will perhaps still look for more in the series, but this one is average, at best.