[I read this for a mailing list discussion so comments may be out of context and will probably contain spoilers]

[on diamond, cliches]

I surprised myself by liking Diamond. At first I thought I wasn’t going to hit it off with him and his anti-technology stance was going to bug the hell out of me. After a while though I felt that he wasn’t totally against new ways of doing policework just sceptical of the way some of his co-workers thought of them as a *replacement* for old-fashioned policework rather than as a *supplement* to the old methods. And I think that’s a viewpoint that’s justifiable and isn’t comparable to the Luddites. Unless I’m forgetting something I don’t remember Diamond stopping his colleagues from using new fangled computers he just wasn’t convinced of their time and labour saving merits himself.

I don’t think Diamond is “the last detective” but I can see why it looks that way to him. I too was surprised that he was only 41, I hadn’t picked up on that in the book. I’d noticed the book was written a decade ago but I’d pegged him as in his 50s and with an attitude slightly older than his age even then.

On the whole I didn’t find him a cliche, I think he could very easily have become one and there were a lot of elements of the stereotypical curmudgeounly policeman: he feels out of place with the younger lads coming up the ranks towards him, he has an enquiry hanging over his head, he quits his job but still carries on with the case, and so on, but on the whole I think Lovesey made Diamond realistic.

I’m surprised that this is the first book in the series as it seemed to have a lot of back story fleshing it out. I thought the enquiry was a hangover from a previous book and I thought the story of how he met his wife would have been dealt with before too. In fact they were both elements that were well done and didn’t leave me wishing I’d read that book first, obviously, I see now, because there isn’t a previous book.