The second crime story from the award-winning Peter Diamond mystery series, by Peter Lovesey.

Peter Diamond, ex-CID and notoriously difficult to work with, is sacked from his latest job as a security guard in Harrods. Doggedly he turns his sleuthing skills to unravelling the mystery of a little Japanese girl abandoned in London. Naomi, as she is known, exhibits the classic symptoms of an autistic child. Diamond regards her first as a challenge and soon as someone he cares passionately about, and devotes himself to communicating with the child. He is close to a breakthrough when Naomi is abducted to New York.

By interpreting clues from drawings left by Naomi, Diamond goes in pursuit and is plunged into a maelstrom of murder and the mafia, suicide and drugs.

Superb, unashamedly traditional crime writing * Publishers Weekly *
One of the choicest crime-shelf entertainments of the year * Guardian *

Born in Middlesex In 1936, Peter Lovesey was the author of 43 novels and seven collections of short stories. He is best known for his eight Victorian crime novels featuring Seargent Cribb and his flagship Peter Diamond series, which began with his Antony-award winning novel, The Last Detective, in 1991. Lovesey was the recipient of numerous awards over his lifetime, including the CWA Silver Dagger, multiple Macavity and Antony awards. He was one of a select number of writers to have been awarded both the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Special Edgar and the Crime Writers' Association's Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement. He died in 2025 at the age of 88.