The Stone Wife

At a Bath auction house, an ancient carved stone draws frenzied bidding — until masked robbers crash the sale and leave a respected professor dead. The stone itself, believed to depict Chaucer's Wife of Bath, becomes both evidence and obsession, planting itself literally in Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond's office and figuratively under his skin. What follows is an investigation that pulls Diamond from medieval literary history to the dangerous present tense of illegal firearms, with the carving looming over every step like a curse he can't quite shake. Lovesey keeps the stakes intimate and the atmosphere bracingly specific to Bath, making the city feel less like backdrop and more like a living participant in the mystery.

What distinguishes this as a reading experience is Lovesey's ability to balance dry wit with genuine procedural tension — Diamond is stubborn, skeptical, and quietly funny, and watching him reluctantly wade into Chaucerian scholarship is a particular pleasure. The dual narrative threads, one following Diamond's historical detective work and another sending colleague Ingeborg deep undercover, give the novel a pleasing structural rhythm. Lovesey's prose is economical without feeling spare, letting character and place carry weight that flashier writers might assign to shock alone.