Wordy Wednesday: Another Peter Diamond Detective Novel

Peter Lovesey's Beau Death -- number 17 in the Detective Peter Diamond series -- was published a while back, but I've just read it this week and very much enjoyed it. The plot, about an exclusive club in Bath that celebrates the history of a fashionable 18th century resident and social leader of the town, has plenty of historic background, presumably accurate, as well as very good suspense in the police solution to two murders. Also some amusing food scenes -- my usual focus.

During the investigation of a body found when a wrecking ball is tearing down a very old building, the police interview many many people, investigate a number of leads -- and often have to stop for food. Detective Peter Diamond is a lover of pub food, so he's not too happy when his friend Paloma arranges a meal at a Mexican restaurant so that he can interview Estella, an expert in the era when the body was thought to have been abandoned:

Estella liked Mexican, so the meeting had been set up for Las Iguanas in the courtyard in Seven Dials, reached through a passageway from Westgate Street. Paloma and Diamond got there early and found a table close to the window.  

“Are you okay with Mexican food?” Paloma said.  

“Now you ask.”  

“Actually I asked Estella and she suggested here. It’s not exclusively Mexican. I’d call it Latin American really.” 

“Fair enough.” Diamond was more of a pub food man: pie and chips. “I’m sure I’ll survive." ... 

They agreed on tapas for starters but the two women’s choice of a dish called blazing bird flavoured with flaming hot habañero sauce was a step too far for Diamond. He settled for a Cuban sandwich and asked for a large jug of water and three glasses. (pp. 44-47). 

Later, a second murder victim also becomes Diamond's responsibility. This victim is young and hip: his kitchen is definitely an indicator of his lifestyle. Looking around:

He’d already concluded that the guy existed mainly on meals he microwaved. There wasn’t a toaster, a blender or a crockpot. The saucepans on the hob looked squeaky clean. The pedal bin was empty. There was little in the cupboard above the microwave except two mugs and several plates of different sizes, a packet of cornflakes, a cut loaf and teabags. The coffee was in a packet inside the fridge— which also contained milk, apple juice and two cartons of spread that Diamond opened, just to be certain. (pp. 226-227).

Diamond searches a little more -- the man was definitely not cooking much, mainly reheating frozen meals, but nothing unexpected is found with them in the freezer. Following a hunch, Diamond looks into the cornflakes box; the cereal had mostly been replaced by packets of cocaine. His fellow detective asks: “What made you think of the cornflakes?” Diamond answers: “The crockery. He had plates and mugs, but no bowl. How would he eat his cornflakes on a flat plate?” (p. 230).

Beau Death is a very good read. I think it's in fact better than many of the previous sixteen novels in the series. However, even though I have read them all, my memory for them is amazingly weak! Don't give me any exams about them.

And for Wordy Wednesday --

I noticed one very amusing Britishism in the book -- a word that was entirely new to me. Diamond and his colleagues had been trying to figure out the role of a particular individual in the complex case they are working on. Diamond, frustrated and tense, speaks half to them and half to himself: "He was chuntering. 'Ten years . . . ten years was what he said . . . ten years easily. But that isn’t twenty. What was Spearman doing for the other ten?' (p. 351).

Chuntering: a new word to me. As the context suggests, chunter means to mutter or to talk in a low inarticulate way, according to Merriam-Webster online. Or according to the Collins online dictionary, it's "British informal. to mutter or grumble incessantly in a meaningless fashion." A nice word for Wordy Wednesday.