Showstopper

Showstopper, the twenty-first Peter Diamond mystery, follows the Bath detective into the world of a hit British television production — a show called Swift, which has been plagued for years by accidents, injuries, disappearances, and deaths that the press has labeled a curse. Diamond, facing forced retirement if he cannot crack the case, works backward through six years of misfortune to find whether bad luck has a human face. Peter Lovesey constructs his mystery with the patient layering of a writer who has been building this character for three decades.

James Langton narrates the Peter Diamond series with the dry, unimpressed authority the Bath detective's voice requires. His performance carries Diamond's skepticism toward the supernatural alongside his genuine investigative intelligence. At nine hours the audiobook gives Lovesey's elaborate construction the room it needs, and Langton's steady pace matches the novelist's methodical approach.