A Room Full of Bones: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 4

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Each mystery provides a complete plot line and an interesting archaeological angle, but it is very much the relationships that keep me engaged in this series. Will Ruth stay single? Will Harry's marriage survive his wife's discovery that he is Kate's father? Will Harry and Ruth find a way to communicate about their child that doesn't ruffle everyone further? There are even the other police officers, whose private lives are starting to form part of the fabric of each book. I became utterly absorbed as the story unfolded ... Another wonderful entry in this justifiable highly acclaimed series' Promoting Crime Fiction. * Promoting Crime Fiction * I love Kate in this book. It’s so enjoyable to see her grown. She’s obviously smart but not unrealistically portrayed. She mostly seems her age. I think in future books she’ll be even more fun as she ages and can even more fully express herself, but I do already love her character. At the end of book one I was worried I’d stop liking the books but she and Ruth’s changes to accommodate her makes me love the books even more. As always, Griffiths manages to blend history, religion and mysticism into the storyline. Here, we get origination stories and the importance of snakes in the various cultures. I always feel like I learn a little something.

So far, I have really enjoyed all the books in this series. This one just cements my affection for them. I think their attraction lies in three main themes. First off, I really like Ruth Galloway as a main character. I like her professionalism and her determination to just get on with things. I'm not cut out to be a single mother (or a married mother, for that matter), but I can appreciate her efforts to raise Kate on her own, especially with all the judgement that seems to get loaded onto mothers. They seem to get blamed for everything that goes wrong with children and fathers get off scot free.Nelson is a tough working-class northern guy, and blah blah blah. We get that too, we heard it all before (about three times in three other books, in fact) with exactly the same words you used in this book. If you can't find an original way to give information on your characters to potential new readers, maybe you should try something else, like, I don't know, writing something that ISN'T a series of books with the same characters? Griffiths' excellent series is well-informed and original, and its setting in one of the bleaker corners of East Anglia is vividly evoked' Literary Review. * Literary Review * A ROOM FULL OF BONES is a pleasing read, perhaps tending more to the "cosy" style of crime fiction than earlier instalments in the series, but is certainly exciting and with a more satisfying crime and detection element this time round as the plot is more clever and more robust. I could have done with reading more about Ruth's professional life and slightly less about her motherhood bliss and details of her domestic arrangements, but I am sure that as Kate gets older and more independent, Ruth will have more time for trouble. I look forward to finding out. There are two ways out of Lord Smith's study. One says 'New World Collection' and one 'Local History'. She pauses, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. A slight sound, a kind of whispering or fluttering, makes her turn towards Local History. She feels in the mood for a soothing collection of Norfolk artefacts. She hopes there are no more waxworks or embalmed animals.

This is the fourth book in the series. We revisit old characters and meet some new ones, and the complicated lives and relationships continue to unfold.Soon Ruth finds a new neighbor from the Aboriginal part of Australia. Bob belongs to a group called the Elginists who zealously oppose the transference of their ancestors bones which were taken without their knowledge from their homeland. DS Judy Johnston and Cathbad again play a major part in the book. In fact, when we weren’t reading about the crime/mystery from one of the Smiths, it was Judy who was investigating. Nelson played a much smaller role when it came to carrying out actual police work. *sniff* MY THOUGHTS: I love Ruth! She is intelligent, passionate about her work, and decidedly unglamorous. How refreshing to have a realistic and relatable main character. She mightn't have the most wonderful life skills - like most of us she is just stumbling through - but I love that too. She does things, mostly in her personal life, and I think 'Oh, Ruth!'; but then, I don't know if I would have done any different. A Room Full of Bones is probably the strongest in the series thus far when it comes to the mystery plot. It introduces quite a lot of interesting crime/mystery aspects, all seemingly unrelated until Griffiths quite cleverly weaves them together. A second dramatic death draws together the curious results of Ruth’s archaeological examination of Bishop Augustine’s remains with the Slaughter Hill racing stables and a series of threatening anonymous letters that Lord Smith has received. The imagery of snakes is common to both medieval Christianity and Australian dreamtime stories and Elly Griffiths utilises this to full spooky effect has more than one character experiences terrifying hallucinations and portents of death. Are there paranormal elements in play, or is there a more prosaic explanation for what's going on?

A fast-paced, insightful and murky story of ordinary lives, buried secrets, and desperate crimes' Good Book Guide. * Good Book Guide * I do love Ruth and so many old and new characters are particularly interesting. Some people and events seemed so real to me I had urges to look them up. A Room Full of Bones is another engrossing instalment in Elly Griffiths' series featuring archaeologist Ruth Galloway. The book opens tantalisingly with the planned opening of a recently unearthed medieval coffin in a Norfolk museum, although before the festivities can get underway an unexpected modern death occurs! As her convictions are tested, she and Nelson must discover how Aboriginal skulls, drug smuggling and the Aboriginal ritual of The Dreaming may hold the answer to these deaths - and be the key to their own survival.Lovers of well-written and intelligent traditional mysteries will welcome [Griffith’s] fourth book . . . A Room Full of Bones is a clever blend of history and mystery with more than enough forensic details to attract the more attentive reader.”— Denver Post Also the author seems to have a fetish with cheating since 99% of her characters are cheating on their partners and worst of all I as a reader can't feel the connections because the author does a poorly job writing about them! One of the characters that is married gets pregnant and just ends things with her lover and it doesn't cross her mind that it might be his or she is so unethical that wants to bestow the child to her husband even though it might not be his! As DI Harry Nelson and his team descend to investigate the death of museum curator Neil Topham, Ruth finds herself in the unenviable position of being the person who found the body (this is starting to become a habit!). The investigation leads Sergeants Judy Johnson and Dave Clough to the nearby racing stables owned by Lord Danforth Smith, whose aristocratic ancestor is celebrated by the museum in which the body was found. Forensic archeologist and academic Ruth Galloway is a captivating amateur sleuth-an inspired creation. I identified with her insecurities and struggles, and cheered her on. " -- Louise Penny, author of the bestselling Armand Gamache series In this book I was so worried about the mystical and magical re curses and such and was so glad that eventually a scientific explanation was provided as a possible probably probable explanation. I was also fine with the cause(s) being left open.

The books mentioned thus far are the main tow books in the Ruth Galloway series. These are the first two books and the highest rated books, too. This book had so many different scenarios and plot lines going on that I marveled that Griffiths was able to tie them up so seamlessly at the end. She has a gift for that. I am hooked on this series. I am finding it like a box of chocolates that I can't put down. I am thinking about creating a new shelf for the Galloway series - "coronavirus escapes," which will include anything I have read since March 2020 that helps me avoid the present reality.Soon the museum's wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too. These two deaths could be from natural causes but DCI Harry Nelson isn't convinced, and it is only a matter of time before Ruth and Nelson cross paths once more. DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Waitomo District Library for the loan of A Room Full of Bonesby Elly Griffiths for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions. I didn't enjoy this episode in the Ruth Galloway series as much as the earlier ones. Perhaps because there were many disparate threads running through it to fully engage me but maybe because there wasn't an archaeological mystery at the heart of it. Ruth is depressed and overweight and she doesn't feel she's a good mother and she loves the depressing saltmarsh where she lives and she likes her job and blah blah. Yes, we get it. The Ruth Galloway Series is a great read for anyone interested in the crime and mystery genre. These books are filled with great action, great dialogue and, most of all, great characters. Another great thing about these books is that they do not go too far deep that young adults cannot read them. Mature teenagers will enjoy these books over a long summer vacation and even adults enjoy these books, too.