The Janus Stone
The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 2
-
-
4.0 • 9 Ratings
-
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
A gruesome discovery at an old children's home lays bare terrible secret's from Norwich's past in the second gripping mystery for Dr Ruth Galloway.
'The setting is enticingly atmospheric . . . a really intelligent murder story' Independent
Dr Ruth Galloway's forensic skills are called upon when builders, demolishing an old house in Norwich, uncover the bones of a child - minus the skull - beneath a doorway. Is it some ritual sacrifice or just plain straightforward murder? Ruth links up with DCI Harry Nelson to investigate.
The house was once a children's home. Nelson traces the Catholic priest who used to run the place. He tells him that two children did go missing forty years before - a boy and a girl. They were never found.
When carbon dating proves that the child's bones predate the home and relate to a time when the house was privately owned, Ruth is drawn ever more deeply into the case. But as spring turns into summer it becomes clear that someone is desperate to put her off the scent by frightening her to death...
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.
