The idea that Beau Brummell rang Bath society is well attributed. Less well attributed, though, is a corpse dessicated and mummified with time in a rickety attic room in a building about to be demolished. The corpse is dressed in eighteenth-century clothes, but there is no guide to who he might be. Aside from Peter Diamond going up in a cherry-picker to get a look at the body before the whole house crumbles, to the amusement of his fellow officers and the general public, Diamond takes everything with the seriousness he always has for a cadaver (as long as the cadaver's post-mortem doesn't involve Diamond being there.
Peter Lovesey keeps going at a level of high class crime fiction that never ceases to astonish, and he's obviously done a lot of research for this episode. Of the many things that make him an author apart, he manages to create a whole palate of characters, all convincing, with a degree of both sympathy and understanding. The is one of those books that doesn't go where you think it's going, and is all the better for that.