The Stone Wife by Peter Lovesey, a Mysterious Review.

Review: During an auction for a piece of sculpture thought to be the Wife of Bath from Chaucer's Canterbury's Tales, three gunman break in and kill one of the bidders, in The Stone Wife, the fourteenth mystery in this series featuring Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond by Peter Lovesey.

The bidding prior to the break in had been unexpectedly brisk, hitting £24,000. The winning bidder, John Gildersleeve, a Chaucer scholar, is identified as the dead man. Diamond takes over the case, puzzled why anyone would pay so much for such an uninspired work of art. Was he trying to impress his colleagues at University, or did he simply take a liking to it and decided he had to have it? Where would he have come up with the funds to pay for it? And most importantly, why would someone go to the effort to kill him but leave the sculpture untouched? As Diamond and his team interview members of academia to seek answers to his questions, he sends his colleague Ingeborg Smith to find the handgun used in the shooting.

The Stone Wife has a surprisingly convoluted plot replete with unexpected twists and turns, which isn't necessarily a negative element to the story but it does tend to make the story a bit more complicated than seems strictly necessary. The characters, however, are brilliantly drawn, so much so that the reader practically feels a part of Diamond's team. With an interesting backstory to the sculpture, this entertaining police procedural-style mystery is another example of why this series is so popular with readers.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of The Stone Wife.

Cop to Corpse
Soho Crime (Hardcover), June 2012
ISBN-13: 9781616950781; ISBN-10: 1616950781

Down Among the Dead Men
Soho Crime (Hardcover), July 2015
ISBN-13: 9781616956264; ISBN-10: 1616956267

The Stone Wife

A Peter Diamond Mystery by Peter Lovesey