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
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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