Book Review: The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths

Available here

I always get over excited at the prospect of a new Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway/Nelson novel. So giddy that I want to savour it ... don't want to rush it ... want to tease myself with the prosepect of reading it. So .. I have to plan. The time has to be just right, the mood just so ... PJ's, hot chocolate, a Caramel Log (or three) and i'm just about ready to begin ... so, just to tantalise you here's the blurb. 

BLURB

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.

What I Think

The Stone Circle is a haunting read ... it always is, when a child is the vicitm, yet Griffiths' sensitivity to the subject matter combined with the various thematic sub plots and the mystery of the whodunnit make it a dynamic read. 

The familiarity of the anonymous letters is further emphased by the appearance of an unexpected character at The Stone Circle, giving the letters a more ominous feel. The theme of child and parent relationships is predominant throughout and in Griffiths' usual perceptive way the dynamics of various relationships are explored. I think though, for me, the Ruth Nelson dynamic is one of the major pulls ... the will they, won't they, what will they, what won't they do, is a driving force as a sub plot. The familiarity of recurring characters make me happy to snuggle up and just let the story absorb me. 

This is highly recommended by The Crime Warp.