Galloway is an everywoman, smart, successful and a little bit unsure of herself. Readers will look forward to learning more about her." -- USA Today 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 A Room Full of Bones also develops ongoing character storylines and relationships, including that between Ruth and DI Nelson, who is the father of her one-year-old daughter, Kate. Nelson's wife, Michelle having become aware of this fact in the closing lines of the previous book has created inevitable complications in Ruth and Harry’s professional and personal relationship. Meanwhile, Cathbad’s covert love affair with married DS Judy Johnson also comes to Ruth's attention for the first time and revelations towards the end of the book indicate fraught times ahead for this couple also. 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. I have read and enjoyed the first three books in this series by Elly Griffiths, about forensic archeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. But this one was a disappointment. The storyline is ridiculous, the characters are stereotypes who behave in the silliest of ways, the writing is clunky and the pace is sluggish. It simply doesn't live up to its predecessors. If you're wondering if you need to have read the other books in the series, the answer is no: however if you haven't read them, they're better books than this one!

Griffiths is one of England’s freshest mystery writers. Her novels combine a dramatic sense of place with a complicated mystery, and with each new installment, her character of Ruth Galloway becomes more complex and dynamic. With the bulk of the tale set on the Norfolk Saltmarsh where “the Gods of the night still reign,” A Room Full of Bones also delivers a potent and thought-provoking exploration of the power of 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.Doctor Ruth Galloway, Head of Forensic Archaeology at the University of North Norfolk, is not thinking about coffins or journalists or even about whether she will encounter DCI Harry Nelson at the Smith Museum. Instead, she is racing through the King’s Lynn branch of Somerfield wondering whether chocolate fingers count as bad mothering and how much wine four mothers and assorted partners can be expected to drink. Tomorrow is Ruth’s daughter’s first birthday and, much against Ruth’s better judgement, she has been persuaded to have a party for her. ‘But she won’t remember it,’ Ruth wailed to her best friend Shona, herself five months pregnant and glowing with impending maternity. ‘You will though,’ said Shona. ‘It’ll be a lovely occasion. Kate’s first birthday. Having a cake, opening her presents, playing with all her little friends.’ Neil doesn’t know if they are joking or not. Do policemen have unions? But he stands aside as the two men shoulder their burden again and carry it, watched by myriad glass eyes, through the Natural History Room and into a smaller room decorated with a mural of Norfolk Through The Ages. There is a trestle table waiting in the centre of the room and, on this, the policemen lower the coffin.

There is no way you get to PhD level without hearing about NAGPRA and the issue of repatriation of human remains belonging to Native American and Australian Aborigine tribes. It's a sensitive issue and a very interesting one, and I heard about it for the first time during the last year of my BA. Again lots of copying and pasting from wikipedia, lots of generalization, and nothing else. Ruth is asked to attend the opening of a recently discovered Bishop's coffin. When she gets to the museum holding the event, however, she finds the curator dead by the coffin. Although on the face of it his death is by natural causes, Nelson and Ruth have their suspicions. As Ruth becomes further embroiled in the case, she must decide where her loyalties lie - a choice that her very survival depends on. 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? 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!I have become so fond of this group of characters. Griffiths does a great job of making you care for them all, even the secondary characters like Judy, who steps more front and center this time. And I love Cathbad. He’s always in the middle of every murder investigation and always finding an excuse to light a bonfire. 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. 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.

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. As an Australian reader, I found much of the archaeological content of A Room Full of Bones particularly fascinating, as the retention of indigenous human remains and other significant items within both Australian and international museum collections is an ongoing controversy. Ruth Galloway's] an uncommon, down-to-earth heroine whose acute insight, wry humor, and depth of feeling make her a thoroughly engaging companion." -- Erin Hart, Agatha and Anthony Award nominated author of Haunted Ground and Lake of Sorrows But one of the biggest draws is the whole theme of spirituality that is a pronounced undercurrent in each volume. Ruth's parents, the born again Christians, have provided Ruth something to rebel against and she has become a materialist. Show the proof or go away. Harry is Catholic and desperately wanted Kate christened, so much so that he made arrangements for the ceremony. In everyday life however, he's a hard headed pragmatist with no patience for mystical goings on. But both Ruth and Harry have Cathbad the Druid in their lives. Cathbad, who often seems to show up at just the right time to prevent disaster, who has an undying love of ceremonies around bonfires, and an annoying tendency to know just the detail that his friends are searching for.

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Nah,’ says Henty. ‘Not his type of thing, is it? There’ll be journalists, the works. You know how the boss hates journos.’ In her ghostly story of silent curses and bad karma, Griffith unfolds a complex chorus of disbelieving hope, where a man points the bone of fire and the devil is thought to embark on revenge as he shimmers in and out of that other dimension. The strange tableau that appears within the Those readers who have loved the previous three books about forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway will, I am sure, thoroughly enjoy her latest outing. Ruth is an academic at the University of North Norfolk, and the mother of a one-year-old girl, Kate. She becomes involved in crimes either in her role as a consultant to the police, or – as here – by accident, and is usually instrumental in their solution.

The dialogues and thoughts of the characters are repetitive, the characters are boring and selfish, the relationships between them shallow and the situations most of the time ridiculous!Funny way to show your love of the natural world, by shooting most of it, thinks Ruth. She notices a brace of guns over the head of the waxwork of Lord Smith. He looks a nasty customer, alive or dead. 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. 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. 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.