The Janus Stone
A Ruth Galloway Mystery
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4.4 • 27 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The second novel in the highly praised new mystery series featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway, a woman who is very intimate with old bones and big trouble.
The Janus Stone, the second Ruth Galloway mystery, sees Ruth literally up to her neck in trouble. She's standing in a trench cut into the ground floor of an old Victorian mansion in Norwich once run by the Catholic church as a home for children. Now it is being demolished to make way for a condo development, and because a medieval church was originally on the site, the town council has ordered an archaeological survey before the new buildings go up. And now they won't go up, not until Ruth has finished her investigation, because she's staring at the headless skeleton of a child buried under the imposing front door.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When a child's headless skeleton turns up during an archeological dig in Griffiths's compelling second Ruth Galloway mystery (after 2010's The Crossing Places), Ruth's determination that the bones are of recent origin spurs her special friend, Det. Chief Insp. Harry Nelson, to investigate the Catholic orphanage run by Fr. Patrick Hennessey that once occupied the Norfolk, England, site. Two children disappeared from the orphanage in 1973, though Ruth's study of the bones suggests that the murderer might have ties not to the orphanage but to the site's Roman's origins. Complicating matters are her pregnancy the result of a one-night stand with Nelson in Crossing and an escalating series of dangerous pranks meant to scare her off the case. Griffiths nimbly weaves the mythological aspects of her story particularly the Roman god Janus, who represents doorways as well as beginnings and endings with the complicated life of her feisty heroine.
