The Stone Circle

The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths

Published by Quercus

February 2018

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to 'go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there'. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle's baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?

Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh - another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle - trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.

As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn't save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

I may have squealed a little bit when my copy of The Stone Circle arrived on my kindle earlier this year and that's because, like many others, I've been sucked wholeheartedly into the Ruth Galloway series of books by Elly Griffiths.  If you are unfamiliar with them, where have you been?  Here's a quick catch-up should you need it: Ruth is an archaeologist working at the university in Norfolk and due to the nature of her career, has managed over the course of 11 books to become involved in many police cases that have involved the unearthing of human bones, be they both modern and ancient.  She has also managed to strike up a relationship between herself and DCI Harry Nelson, a brusk northerner who is already married to the beautiful Michelle and father to two children of his own though he now also has a daughter with Ruth.  Other characters in the stories have also struck up relationships with one another during the course of these books, and for many the most pressing question in this novel is about who the father of Michelle Nelson's baby is - her husband Harry or that of her lover Tim who tragically passed away saving her life in the last book?

Anyway, I digress.  The remains of a body are unearthed on the Saltmarsh and they are identified as those of a young girl who disappeared one sunny day during a street party some thirty years ago just after Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer.  Many of those involved in the case are still in the surrounding area today and DCI Nelson reopens the case in the hope that today there can be some closure for Margaret's family; after all someone has kept quiet about killing her all this time, can there be some shred of evidence that helps the police to finally catch her murderer?

The story interweaves parts of the Scarlett Henderson killing into play (which were featured in the first book of the series The Crossing Places) and Ruth and Nelson are once again drawn together both in and out of work.  For many readers it is not just the crime element of these books that holds its legion of fans gripped, but the complex relationships of the characters themselves.  I had many questions I wanted to throw out there once I'd finished the book (but won't put on here for fear of spoiling the book for others) but Elly Griffiths has a way of ending the books with the reader asking as many questions at the end of the book as they have at the beginning. And now we have to wait for novel 12.  I for one don't think I can!!!

Happy Reading

Miss Chapters x