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The Stone Wife

Detective Peter Diamond Book 14

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The Stone Wife

By: Peter Lovesey
Narrated by: Michael Tudor Barnes
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About this listen

Just as the bidding gets exciting in a Bath auction house, three armed men stage a hold-up and attempt to steal Lot 129, a medieval carving of the Wife of Bath. The highest bidder, appalled to have the prize snatched away, tries to stop them and is shot dead.

Peter Diamond, head of the murder squad, soon finds himself sharing an office with the stone wife - until he is ejected. To his extreme annoyance the lump of stone appears to exert a malign influence over him and his investigation. Refusing to be beaten, he rallies his team and begins finding suspects and motives.

The case demands that someone goes undercover. The dangerous mission falls to Sergeant Ingeborg Smith, reverting to her journalist persona to get the confidence of a wealthy local criminal through his pop star girlfriend. And soon, murder makes a reappearance...

©2014 Peter Lovesey (P)2014 Soundings Crime Crime Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction International Mystery & Crime Medical Mystery Police Procedural Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Detective Murder Marriage Suspense
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A better storykine with a little humour thrown in. No way for the reader to work out who the murderer was but I like it that way!

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Of course a series about a Bath detective should have a tale with at least passing reference to Chaucer's Wife of Bath, one of the more memorable characters of the Canterbury Tales.

Diamond is led through a series of incidents and yet somehow manages to untangle the false leads and catch the culprit, sorting out truth from lies and fact from fiction. The narrator is excellent and the best of all the Diamond story tellers.

A Good Wif was there...

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This was my first Peter Lovesey novel. I found it a pleasant listen which felt quite old fashioned. It reminded me of an Agatha Christy novel, although set in modern times. Whilst I listened to it all and enjoyed it, I don't think I will rush to read others in the series.

A pleasant listen

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Where does The Stone Wife rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Near the top

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not sure really, it was a good story, quite long but had momentum.

Have you listened to any of Michael Tudor Barnes’s other performances? How does this one compare?

no

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No

Good Meaty Story

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Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Not Really, I found it very run of the mill, with lots of unnecessary padding.

If this book were a film would you go see it?

no

Any additional comments?

`The Chaucer link gave it a little colour, but the police woman going under cover in the house of someone who quite frankly had no link to the initial crime on very tentative suspicion with no warrant was ludicrous, as was this whole very long tedious thread which culminated in a very weird event which was again not linked to the main story at all. This took up most of the book and for me spoiled the enjoyment of the story, as in Agatha Christie novels, we learn at the very end that the perpetrator is a minor character who has hardly appeared in the main text, and there was no way on the information given that the reader could have worked out for themselves who did it, which for me is the joy of a well written "Who Done It".

Standard Crime Who Done It

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