The Stone Wife
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3.9 • 28 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“[W]onderful tidbits of Chaucerian scholarship enliven the novel. And whatever you think of Peter Diamond, he proves himself a 'verray, parfit, gentil knyght.'” —The New York Times Book Review
At a Bath auction house, a large slab of carved stone is up for sale. At the height of very competitive bidding, there is a holdup attempt by three masked robbers. They shoot and kill the highest bidder, a professor who has recognized the female figure carved in the stone as Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. The masked would-be thieves flee, leaving the stone behind.
Peter Diamond and his team are assigned to investigate, and the stone is moved into Diamond’s office so he can research its origins. The carving causes such difficulties that he starts to think it has jinxed him. Meanwhile, as Diamond’s leads take him to Chaucer’s house in Somerset, his intrepid colleague Ingeborg goes undercover to try to track down the source of the handgun used in the murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A crime committed at an auction house in Bath propels Diamond Dagger Award winner Lovesey's so-so 14th whodunit starring irascible but endearing Chief Supt. Peter Diamond (after 2013's The Tooth Tattoo). The bidding has become heated for a stone bust of the Wife of Bath, but just after Chaucer authority John Gildersleeve offers 24,000 for the item, three men don masks and pull guns in an attempt to steal the statue. When Gildersleeve foolishly grabs the arm of one of the men, the thug shoots him dead. Panic ensues, and the would-be thieves flee. Diamond, "Bath's head of CID," leads the investigation, which features many oddities, including a witness hesitant to admit that he was bidding on the behalf of the British Museum. Convinced that the triggerman was paid by another, Diamond sends one of his team undercover, but the plot suffers from his subsequent absence. Hopefully, Lovesey will return to form in the next installment.
