Here, Peter Diamond is attempting to gain entrance to a country house where a fundraising fete is in progress. Stagestruck provides liberal helpings of the sparkling dialog we’ve come to expect from this author. He also has the support and sympathy of his friend Paloma Kean, an expert on the period fashions often used in theatre and film. Luckily, his efforts are aided by an exceptional team of officers, in particular the intuitive and feisty DC Ingeborg Smith.
He has managed to survive a devastating personal tragedy but finds that there are still inner demons he must conquer in order to be the best policeman, indeed the best person, that he can be. Peter Diamond himself is a complex and interesting character. The novel is rich with the lore of the Bath Theatre in particular and British theatrical custom and practice in general. Nevertheless, Peter Lovesey is an author who almost never disappoints, and he certainly didn’t disappoint me with Stagestruck. If I, the reader, know – or at least strongly suspect – that it was actually a murder, why don’t they? They’re the ones who are supposed to be brainy and skeptical regarding these matters! Also, there’s a death that’s immediately presumed by the police to be a suicide. One has to do with the way in which Lovesey makes use in the plot of the phenomenon of self-harming, or self-injury. ( In the writing of this play, Van Druten in turn drew his inspiration from Christopher Isherwood‘s Berlin Stories, in particular “Goodbye to Berlin.”) The production being thus bedeviled is John Van Druten’s I Am a Camera, the play upon which the musical Cabaret is based. This time, Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond is faced with a particularly baffling crime – or rather series of crimes, all of which take place within the precincts of Bath’s storied Theatre Royal. Peter Lovesey has delivered yet another surefire entertainment with Stagestruck. Its crimson, cream and gold decorations were just discernible, the silk panels, the gilded woodwork, garlands and crystal chandelier giving a sense of the antique theatre that this was, essentially no different from the interior known known to the actors who first played here in the reign of George III. The horseshoe-shaped auditorium was in darkness. Jat 8:42 pm ( Book review, books, Mystery fiction, The British police procedural)
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