I found the narration to be exquisite, just like the first book in this series. Unfortunately, this book revolves more around the danger to the main ..Show More »character, Ruth, and not any active crime. I found the struggles between the heroes and villains to be a bit contrived since the point of real conflict was several decades old. Will still get the third book, and the first one is a real gem!

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The character development that made me want to continue the series was a real turn off in this book. I don't believe we all have to fatally flawed to ..Show More »be interesting. Every character doesn't have to be a caricature.

Harry and Ruth are turning into a regular little soap opera. I don't know if I'll read the last installment. Lord knows I'm not a writer so take my criticisms as what they are, an average reader with little tase for melodrama.



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I was disappointed in the previous Ruth Galloway mystery (The House at Sea's End). Three stars disappointed. I actually said that I wasn't looking f..Show More »orward to forensic anthropology with a toddler. However, the author made a decision to have a significant event in the relationship between Ruth and her baby's father happen between books that actually seems to help the story arc in my opinion.

The story opens with the death of a director of a small local museum. He is found lying dead beside the coffin of a medieval bishop that had been excavated from a site that had once been a church and then an industrial site. The window is open, a single shoe lies on the floor and a guide book whose pages riffle in the breeze. Ruth Galloway, forensic anthropologist, finds the body. Murder or natural causes? A drug habit might argue one, but menacing letters in his desk drawer might argue the other.

The museum also houses some Australian aborigine bones that a group calling itself the Elginists (Lord Elgin's marbles but I'm not sure why they named themselves after the guy who took the marbles from the Parthenon) want repatriated. These bones were collected by the ancestor of the founder of the museum, Lord Smith. Lord Smith is also a racing stable owner, married with three adult children, one of whom helps with the stable, one who is a successful QC and one who is a wastrel.

Meanwhile Harry Nelson's team is also dealing with the importation of high quality drugs from over seas that apparently no one in the criminal community knows about.

The disentangling all of the threads kept me interested through the entire story. There was one thing that niggled at me after I finished the book but I can't tell it without spoilers so I just have to say that it might bother others also.

I gave this book 4 stars because it was a better than average entertainment even with the occasional fault.

P.S. Jane McDowell does her usual good job with the narration.

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