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Wednesday, May 8, 2019

The Stone Circle


By Elly Griffiths

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt     2019
368 pages     Mystery

The Stone Circle is book 11 in the Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery series. Here is a recap of the story line from Kirkus Review.

“An anonymous letter brings DCI Harry Nelson memories of past sorrows and present dangers.
The letter mentions a stone circle that harks back to the 20-year-old case of a missing child. Ten years later, another missing child introduced Harry to archaeologist Ruth Galloway when he asked her to examine some bones. That case began a working relationship that turned out to be equally productive in personal terms: A short-lived affair between the two produced a child, Kate, though Harry is married and has two grown daughters. His wife, Michelle, who accepts Kate in their lives, is about to give birth to a baby who may or may not be Harry’s. A new archaeological team working near the site of the original henge finds a stone coffin containing bones. The head of the dig is Leif Anderssen, whose father, Erik, was Ruth’s mentor all those years ago. As Harry continues to receive cryptic messages, the bones of what Ruth thinks is a young girl are found near the new dig, opening up yet another old case. The police think the body is that of Margaret Lacey, who vanished from a street party in 1981. The focus at the time was on her parents; her older siblings, Annie and Luke; and John Mostyn, a neighbor and odd duck who collected stones. But nothing was ever proven, and Margaret’s body was never found. The birth of George, Michelle’s son, puts more pressure on Harry, who loves his wife and Ruth in different ways, to stay in his marriage. Nelson’s team and some friends of Ruth’s use their own areas of expertise to search for clues from the past, but when the child of Annie’s daughter, Star, is kidnapped, the present-day crisis takes center stage.”

Wow! The Stone Circle is a complicated story, made more complicated by the fact that this is book 11 in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series, and it is a very difficult series to enter at this point in the narrative. There are a lot of characters, a lot of drama swirling around those characters, and a lot of plot devices that make dropping into such a well-developed story problematic. That being said, I enjoyed the book and its main characters. Ruth Galloway is a professor of archaeology, and she is often called upon to use her archaeological skills to solve murder mysteries. I liked this aspect of the character because it is an unusual career choice, and the reader can learn bits and pieces of archaeology along with the drama.

I particularly liked the setting. North Norfolk is a part of England that I have never visited, and it sounded so beautiful, and so filled with mysterious history, that it made me want to take another trip to England just to see this part of the country.


Another thing that appealed to me is the Norwegian archaeologist who is working at a new dig site on the North Norfolk coast of England. My nephew is a Norwegian archaeologist, and I kept envisioning Will at the site rather than Leif. (Will currently is working on an early Viking site off the coast of Bergen Norway.)

A big surprise were the convoluted romantic relationships swirling around the police community. Apparently, avid readers of the series know all about these relationships, but I found it all quite interesting and unique. Apparently, Griffiths had gone back to the original book in the series, The Crossing Place, for some of the plot devices. So, perhaps this is a series that ought to be read in order. I wouldn’t recommend starting at The Stone Circle. The Kirkus review concludes that the series
never disappoints. “It’s patented combination of mysterious circumstances, police procedure, and agonizing relationship problems will keep you reading, and feeling, all night.”

Elly Griffiths website. On her website, she indicates that Elly Griffiths is her pen name. Her real name is Domenica de Rosa. Besides the Dr. Ruth Galloway series, she also writes the Stephens & Mephisto novels.



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