The Tooth Tattoo

Starred review from February 18, 2013
In the prologue, set in 2005, to Lovesey’s excellent 13th Peter Diamond whodunit (after 2012’s Cop to Corpse), a young Asian woman who appears to be a music student stops violist Mel Farran in the street after a concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Her autograph request proves to be only a diversion for an accomplice to steal Farran’s viola. Seven years later, an acclaimed string quartet, whose previous violist disappeared in Budapest in 2008, recruits Farran. Meanwhile, Bath CID’s Diamond, who’s having some trouble with his significant other, looks into the suspicious death of a woman found in a canal. The only clue to her identity is the tattoo of a musical note on one of her teeth. Lovesey neatly weaves Farran’s experiences with his eccentric new colleagues with Diamond’s investigation. A particularly crafty resolution of the enigmatic mystery shows that this long-running series still has plenty of life. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider.

The Peter Diamond procedurals are very well made, and this one would be particularly entertaining but for the extremely disappointing production and performance. Clive Anderson can act, and he's excellent with accents, but almost all his women have distractingly breathy, oddly pitched voices not found in nature. Worse, he makes a disastrous choice for a key character, the cellist in a world-class string quartet linked to several murders. Cat is written as bigger than life, full of charisma and confidence, but Anderson gives her a low-energy whisper-in-your ear voice that makes no sense and doesn't change when drama demands it. Equally serious are some bad edits, much inattentive phrasing, and an absurd number of recurring mispronunciations. Netsuke is tricky, but Genoa? Budapest? Haydn? Come ON. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine