A review by ericwelch
The Vault by Peter Lovesey

3.0

Detective Superintendent Diamond, of Bath, has a peculiar crime on his hands. A pair of hands is discovered by workmen excavating a old cellar that turns out to be the vault of an old house that once had belonged to Mary Shelley, and it appears she had written Frankenstein while in residence there. Professor Joe Dougan from Ohio has found a book of Milton’s poetry with the initials M.W.G. inscribed inside the cover (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was Mary Shelley’s maiden name when she lived in Bath.) Clearly the book had belonged to the author while she was working on her famous novel. The case suddenly becomes complicated when the professor's wife disappears, and the body of Peg Redbird, owner of the Noble and Nude Antique Shop, washes up at the weir. Dougan had been at the Noble and Nude trying to trace the provenance of his book, and Peg had told him it had originally been found in an old writing box that Dougan hopes might have belonged to Shelley. Another Frankenstein connection appears in the guise of two paintings that may have been done by Blake as illustrations for the original publication. Then Joe Wigman, another detective assigned to the case, is found in a field, the back of his head coshed in. Diamond is a refreshing character, no drinking problem, he loves his wife, but there is enough of the curmudgeon in him to be constantly irritated by his boss, the assistant chief constable (Georgina) and her requests to cater to the councilmen and politicos (one of whom is her boyfriend) and reporters (whom Diamond generally loathes). Valuable clues keep popping up courtesy of one of these reporters who’s dying to become a police detective herself, much to Diamond’s consternation.