A police procedural in a long running series, set in the city of Bath and the surrounding area. Peter Diamond is a Chief Superintendent in CID, the plain clothes police department, and is called in to assist when the third uniformed officer in a row is shot by a sniper. The others were killed in nearby towns but this time the victim is killed in Bath while on the beat (foot patrol).

There are some good aspects such as the wry humour of a Chief Superintendent who gets car sick during car chases, and some of the banter between the police characters, but other aspects struck me as unconvincing. This included the hostility of Diamond's team to the possibility that it is an inside job - that the murders are connected and that either a police person or a civilian working at a police station is involved. Diamond seems to blunder from one mishap to another, including going on stake out in unsuitable clothing, and ending up on crutches after assault by the apparent perpetrator. Leaving aside the point that someone of his senior rank wouldn't be involved in such hands-on police work (since all police procedural novels and TV shows also ignore this), it's difficult to see how he has managed to keep the respect of his team up to now. But their hostility is also a bit ridiculous as there are plenty of real-life instances of police who have not measured up to their calling so they should have had the open mindedness to at least consider it even if they were determined to find evidence to prove their boss' theory wrong.

There is also an unexplained (until the end of the book) and rather boring blog inserted at various points along the way. A young woman apparently does some amateur sleuthing with two friends into the behaviour of a man who books short trips abroad. The blog hints that another character who is ex-army may be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and could therefore be the sniper responsible for the police deaths.

The actual denouement I found totally unconvincing. I won't say more as it would give too much away, but it seemed far fetched across the board, with the motives of those concerned failing to justify their actions. ( )

A good mystery. without being unfair, Lovesey has his principle character hold back from the common thinking and pursue the case on his own. Lovesey doesn't telegraph a thing but he could be a bit more elaborate as he takes us for the ride. This is not a simple mystery nor is it a simple occurrence. One has to be prepared to stretch in order to grasp the story. ( )

A return to mid-season form for Peter Lovesey following last year's weak offering "Stagestruck".

The novel opens with uniformed constable Harry Tasker being shot dead as he completes his city centre beat in the early hours of Sunday morning. There have already been two brutal, unprovoked murders of uniformed police officers in the area, so passions are riding high. Lovesey's no-nonsense detective, Superintendent Peter Diamond, who heads the local Manvers Street nick (the station at which PC Tasker was based) takes over the investigation, only to find himself fighting a turf war over jurisdiction with Chief Superintendent Jack Gull from the Regional Serial Crimes Unit.

Meanwhile the reader is allowed to read a blog posted by Ishtar, adopted pseudonym of a local woman who, along with her two best friends, uncover the apparently sinister behaviour of a man masquerading as a Mr John Smith who seems to be up to something involving regular clandestine flights to Amsterdam.

Lovesey weaves a tight and compelling plot and, as usual, takes the opportunity to impart much of his extensive local knowledge. Diamond is as brash as ever, though such is the extent of Gull's gung-ho approach that Diamond appears almost a paragon of sensitivity. He succeeds in maintaining high tension throughout the story, without having to resort to grotesque violence. ( )

This was exciting in some ways, but the identity of the (main) killer was kind of a letdown. ( )

Cop to Corpse, by Peter Lovesey, is the twelfth in his long-running Peter Diamond series. There have been two seemingly random cop killings in the towns around Bath, England, and when a third occurs in Bath itself, CID Chief Diamond must defend his turf from Jack Gull, head of the serial crimes unit, while puzzling out the motives of the killer. Unless, of course, there is more than one killer at work. Meanwhile, a young blogger calling herself Ishtar is, with a couple of female friends, playing a sleuthing game in which they are trying to understand the behaviour of a travel agency's customer, someone who may or may not be connected to Diamond's case.... I have read some Lovesey stories before, but have not read the Peter Diamond series, so I'm coming to it cold, with no information about how the characters may or may not have developed over time. Unfortunately, I didn't find much to like in this story; some motives that emerge in the course of the book are flimsy and not terribly believable, and I felt that Diamond's tendency toward getting it wrong before getting it right was overdone and repetitive. I suppose long-time readers of this series will enjoy this entry, but it didn't give me a reason to want to go back to discover previous novels in the series. Disappointing. ( )