In Java Persistence with Hibernate figure 9.1 shows that a detached object cannot transition directly to removed without being persisted, however in Listing 9.8 there is an example of a detached object being removed simply by a call to session.delete(item);

Does this mean that the diagram is incomplete?

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Stephen Souness

The call to delete() makes the detached object persistent, then removes it. It is known to the persistence context after you call delete() and managed there, albeit only for the deletion on flush.