Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Month: February 2025

Peter Lovesey’s Diamond Series

February 11, 2025 / / 0 Comments

One of the many mystery/detective series I’ve gotten into over the past few years has been Peter Lovesey’s Peter Diamond books; I’m not sure why Lovesey gave his leading character the same first name as his own, but it’s a bit confusing at times. At this point, I’m no longer sure which of the Diamond books I read first, as there’s now more than twenty of them. It might be Upon a Dark Night, or The Last Detective. According to my library database, the former is the first one entered, and the latter the second. The latter is also the first in the series. I might have started there, maybe not. I tend to start series out of order, since I buy them when I find them. Anyway, I found the first Lovesey book good enough to start looking for all of Peter Lovesey’s books. He has written other books, after all.

Of the 22 books in the Diamond series (if I’m correct regarding that number), I owned—until recently 19 books in the series. The 22nd book was recently published in hardcover, so I’ll discount that one for now. It also might be the last in the series, but I’ll need to wait for the paperback to be sure. Of the other two, one was the 20th in the series. The other, the seventh book in the series, is a far more consequential book. Since I’d read books 8-19, plus book 21, I knew that a singular and major event happened in Diamond’s (fictional) life at some point. Book seven, Diamond Dust, covers that event. It’s a tough read, for sure, knowing the fate in that book of someone close to Diamond.

Most of the books featuring police detective Peter Diamond take place in (or around) Bath, England. I’ve been to Bath twice in my life. The most recent visit was in 2024, where I spent three days in the city, walking the streets (and running through a fair number of them), seeing the sights, and falling in love with the town. My previous visit was in 2000, where I spent just one day there, and saw only a minuscule part of the city. Still, it was an important visit back in 2000, since I connected Bath at that time with Jane Austen. As an English major in college and a Jane Austen fan, that visit meat a great deal to me at the time.

Bath, despite being a touristy town (myself admittedly being one of those tourists), is a wonderful place. The city is ancient. It’s historic. It’s bisected by a river, which always is a thrill in itself. There are hills all around the city. Stonehenge is nearby, London and other places a mere train ride away. There’s the Abbey, the Roman baths, the Crescent, Pulteney Bridge, the weir, so many other features. It has a wonderful Waterstones bookstore, plus far more things that I never got to see. And, lots and lots of tourists. In other words: I love Bath (well, apart from the tourists, even though I was one of them…).

That aside, back to Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series….

All the books I have of Lovesey’s were published by Soho Crime. Once I started to buy and read the trade paperback editions, I had to continue with that format (Okay, so I do have a hardcover or two). I also read them out of order, more or less as I found them. Some, I bought new. Other books, because they weren’t in my local bookstores, I bought used—when and if I came across them in local used bookstores. A handful of the books I found in a specialty bookstore, Murder by the Book, in Houston, Texas. Even there, they didn’t have all the books as new ones.

In January, 20025 I came across Diamond Dust, one that I’d been hunting for quite some time (viz. book seven). This book was in the small used books section in Murder by the Book. I don’t visit Houston often, but I was able to swing to Murder by the Book for slightly less than an hour in January 2025. While there, I was thrilled to find a copy of Diamond Dust in great condition for a used book. Strangely enough, the other two books in the series that I lacked also were there, but I didn’t realize it at the time for one of them, and I skipped the other as it was a hardcover edition, and I have all the rest in trade paperback.

Part of the delight in the series is the setting: the city of Bath in England. Part of it is the main character himself: the overweight, clumsy, yet efficient and old-fashioned detective, Peter Diamond. He’s such a funny person, bumbling yet not stupid, that one can’t help but like him. In the series you also see the changing landscape of local policing. When I visited Bath in 2024, I walked past the supposed HQ of the Bath police department (or former HQ(, in Manvers Street; it’s near the train station, and close to the “center” of town—the area around the Abbey. I really wanted to go inside and ask if anyone had read Lovesey’s books, and if so, what they had thought of them. However, I’m sure I would have been disappointed. I don’t think I ever saw an officer of the law while in Bath. Would it have mattered? Probably not. Bath in real life is nothing like the fictional world. However much one might wish that someone like Peter Diamond existed—they don’t. Which is sad, I think.

Still, if you like good old fashioned English crime stories, seek out Peter Lovesey’s books. You won’t be disappointed. Meanwhile, I’m going to read Diamond Dust slowly, since I known there are powerful emotions at work in that book. I will try not to skip to the end. It’s hard, sometimes, dealing with the stress in a book like this. But, I must resist that temptation, since Diamond means so much to me. Let it all work out, I tell myself.

And then, once I’ve read this book: onward to those other two remaining books in the series.

Books added: Four Arkham House books.

February 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I know that I’ll never collect them all, but I do like to pick up Arkham House books when I come across them. In this case, I recently acquired a group of four books by quite disparate authors. When I looked for information about the authors and when their books were published, I turned to Sixty Years of Arkham House by S. T. Joshi. The index in this book isn’t entirely accurate, and each entry is relatively short, covering publication date, number of copies, and a little more. Sometimes there’s an listing of contents for poems and short stories in the volume, but I guess that when covering 200 books there’s not too much room for anything else.

Joshi’s book lists 193 items published by Arkham House; I now own a mere 35 of them. This number is just under 20%, an almost insignificant percentage. I’m quite happy with the ones that I have, though, and I’ll only look for others if a) they’re within my budget and b) the condition looks decent.

The Face in the Mirror, Denys Val Baker
Published in 1971, and now the earliest of my Arkham House books; 2045 copies printed. A slim volume of tales set in the author’s native Cornwall. Prior to this book the earliest Arkham House book that I owned was published in 1975. Having now come close to the magic decade of the 1960s, it makes me quite excited to have a copy of this book.

The Height of the Scream, Ramsey Campbell
Published in 1976; 4348 copies printed. Campbells third Arkham House collection. I own just a couple of Campbell books. One is part of Borderlands Press “Little Book” series. The other is a collection from Dark Harvest with both Campbell and Charles Grant stories (Dark Harvest’s Black Wine). Aside from that, I may have a few anthologies where Campbell has contributed a story.

Dwellers in Darkness, August Derleth
Also published in 1976; 3926 copies printed. The eighth and last Arkham House collection of Derleth stories. Derleth was one of the founders of Arkham House. To acquire the prior seven of his collection likely would bust a few budgets.

The Darkling, David Kesterton
Published in 1982; 3126 copies printed. Kesterton’s name doesn’t appear in the index of Joshi’s 1999 book, and the book title’s page number listed in the index is incorrect. Joshi’s also quite dismissive of the book and author in his note, calling it a “‘Slushpile’ submission that made it’s way to publication.”

It’s such a shame that this major publisher of weird fiction fizzled into almost nothing when it had the major IP of the “Arkham House” name behind it. They’ve hardly published anything in the past two decades. Most of their books published prior to 1970 are hard to find or quite expensive. This is as expected, given the name, as well some of the authors works in that group. Arkham House released N copies for each of their books, no special editions. Golden Gryphon did the same. Most other small current presses will have two or three states: trade hardcover, limited, and/or ultra-limited. Trade books in these states don’t list how many are printed. Limited will list the number of copies in this state, while the ultra-limited usually are lettered books limited to 26 copies.

I’m by no means a Lovecraft fan, but recently saw a bidding war online for the first two collections of his letters rise from $0.99 to nearly $150. That’s a pittance if you interested in early Clark Ashton Smith, or Ray Bradbury’s Dark Carnival (I’ve seen these listed upwards of $6,500), or even William Hope Hodgson’s House on the Borderlands book (close to $1,000). Basically, all the early books fetch prices only the serious collector would pay.

The Jam

February 3, 2025 /

This weekend I watched a documentary on the British band, The Jam, a band that came to fame in the UK in 1977. They released a bunch of singles and albums between that year and their breakup in 1982, supposedly became the voice of a generation, and then vanished.

I think the first song that I ever heard by The Jam was the 1982 single, “The Bitterest Pill,” which was their (second-to-last) single, though in my ears a far better send-off than “The Beat Surrender,” their real last single.

Many years later I listened to some older songs. Of those, only “A Town Called Malice” and “That’s Entertainment” stick with me, although I have vague recollections of “Going Underground” and “Eton Rifles.” All of these songs came out prior to 1982, the year that I really started to listen to British Top 40—and beyond—songs. At the time, I was a teenager living in Zambia, and picked up British songs by chance and recording from friends. In 1983 I moved to Norway, where I picked up BBC Radio One on my radio. This exposed me to Top 40 songs as well as alternatives. By then, The Jam were history, and Paul Weller’s new band, The Style Council, came to the fore.

At that time, I liked The Style Council more than The Jam, at least when it came to many of the songs. Still, Weller kept changing, and apparently the fifth Style Council album was dropped by the label, due to differences between what the label expected and Weller own tastes. After that, Weller went solo, and released his own stuff; I own several of those solo works, although not all of them.

In terms of The Jam, this was a band created by teenagers. They rose to fame, then the lead person decided to end the band and move on. Weller’s always come across as someone with a massive ego, and this documentary does nothing to dispel than view. Although The Style Council was a huge departure from The Jam, his solo stuff doesn’t seem to have the same drive and energy. In a sense, this mirrors many other bands — the lead writer decides to go his own way, and breaks up the band that made him famous. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.

The Jam weren’t a huge force in my musical life, but they do have some great songs. The Style Council —well, I tend to favor their tunes. As for Weller the solo artist, not so much. Did he destroy his own legacy? Maybe. The Jam could have morphed into other things, but in terms of the documentary, Weller did his bandmates dirty. He cut off his own bandmates, neither of them spoke to him for decades.

What I gained from the documentary was a little bit of history, but also it diminished Weller in my eyes. I think in the future I’ll be less inclined to look for Weller’s music, which is a sad testimony to his supposed talent.

So it goes.

With many bands.

Destroyed by ego.

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