Superintendent Peter Diamond and Bath's Major Crime Investigation Team struggle to figure out who's responsible for a six-year stretch of mishaps plaguing a popular TV program. Daisy Summerfield, the veteran performer on Swift who plays bad-girl heroine Caitlin Swift's mobbed-up mother, is felled by a heart attack when she returns home unexpectedly and confronts a burglar. There's no way her death can be murder, yet it draws attention to a mind-boggling series of misfortunes that have befallen Swift ever since Trixie Playfair, whom creator/producer Mary Wroxeter originally cast as Caitlin Swift, abruptly withdrew over a devastating panic attack and was replaced by glamourpuss Sabine San Sebastian in 2013, before shooting even began. An engineer's been burned in a fire in a sound equipment van; two stuntmen were injured in a rooftop chase; assistant producer Dave Tudor has gone missing; Dan Burbage, who played Sgt. Monaghan, suffered permanent brain damage in a climbing accident; and Mary Wroxeter herself died of acute alcohol poisoning, presumably from four vodkas too many. To top it off, Jacob Nicol, a rigger who'd just started to work on the production, upstages Daisy Summerfield by vanishing from a location shoot at World War II airfield Charmy Down. Diamond doesn't believe in coincidences, but he's hard-pressed to find a pattern behind these wide-ranging calamities. Fans who join the hunt looking for a single master key may well be disappointed; Lovesey's greatest achievement here is sifting through the wreckage of Swift to produce a logical motive and a culprit you really should have suspected. Another triumph for a veteran sleuth who's pretty unstoppable himself. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In MWA Grandmaster Lovesey's superior 21st Peter Diamond investigation (after 2021's Diamond and the Eye), Bath Superintendent Diamond's officious and image-conscious boss, Asst. Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, tells him it's time for him to think about retiring. Bucking her directive, Diamond has his team look into a series of tragedies that have befallen Swift, a hit TV series featuring a glamorous female villain as its eponymous main character. The press revives what it calls the show's history of jinxes following the death from an apparent heart attack of elderly actress Daisy Summerfield, who portrayed Swift's mother, after surprising a burglar in her flat. In the two years before Summerfield's death, the show's creator died from alcohol poisoning and a cast member suffered permanent brain damage from a fall. Diamond artfully manipulates Dallymore into greenlighting an investigation into whether these events were unrelated instances of bad luck or something more sinister. The fair-play cluing and surprising twists bolster the plausible police procedural plot. More than 30 years into this series, Lovesey shows no signs of losing steam or ingenuity. Agent: Jane Gelfman, ICM/Gelfman Schneider Literary. (Dec.)

An absconding star, repeated injuries, and now two missing personnel: no wonder the hit British TV show Swift is considered cursed. Even as he hunts for the missing men, Peter Diamond, Chief Superintendent of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad, learns that the show's producer has also vanished. From that rare author to have been graced with both MWA Grand Master status and a CWA Lifetime Achievement Award.