Book Three in this series ended with a bit of a cliffhanger and at the beginning of book four, it’s resolved. Michele has figured out that Nelson is Kate’s father and has forbidden him from having any contact with Ruth or Kate, except professional. Well, Ruth finding a dead body at the local museum provides the professional excuse for them to again interact. The museum also houses a whole collection of Aborigine bones, which a group called The Elginists are seeking to repatriate back to Australi...

There’s a formula (or balance) in my favorite mystery series— something like 70-80% mystery/crime threads to about 20-30% main sleuth/ regular character development. So based on that, this entry in the wonderful Dr Ruth Galloway series would only rate three stars because the mystery is barely 50% of the story.But that’s okay because this book concentrates on the personal lives of Ruth and her friends. This book feels like a major turning point in the Galloway/Nelson relationship. And it’s really...

So far, I have really enjoyed all the books in this series. This one just cements my affection for them. I think their attraction lies in three main themes. First off, I really like Ruth Galloway as a main character. I like her professionalism and her determination to just get on with things. I'm not cut out to be a single mother (or a married mother, for that matter), but I can appreciate her efforts to raise Kate on her own, especially with all the judgement that seems to get loaded onto mothe...

I don’t know what to make of the crimes presented in this book. They are contrived at best. There is also som aboriginal spiritual issues going on, due to some bones kept in a private collection. Too many different directions all at once.What I do enjoy, tremendously, is the permanent cast of characters. Particularly Ruth the archeologist and protagonist. That is why I keep returning to the series. I will continue to do so, and hope that the plotting gets better eventually.

This one made me quite emotional Nelson! Cathbad! An Australian theme and the issue of repatriation of aboriginal bones, a link to serpents and a curse. All good stuff. I find this series compulsive reading.

This is the 4th book in the Ruth Galloway series by author Elly Griffiths.The local museum in King's Lynn is preparing for Halloween night with the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. Ruth Galloway is one of the supervisors and turns up early to find the museum's curator lying dead beside the coffin. Another case for DI Nelson and it is not long before the dead body of the museum's owner lies dead in his stables too. Although the two deaths look like natural causes it

This is a terrific mystery series. Why?1. The recurring characters are interesting and have depth. The relationships developing between them make me want to leap from one book straight to the next. 2. British countryside near the sea. This is where the main character lives. It's creepy and dark at night. Bonus. What's not to like about the British countryside?3. Griffiths' writing is easy to fall into. It can make me laugh and cry. She observes human nature keenly and weaves those observations i...

Well, Elly Griffiths, this is starting to be really repetitive. Ruth is depressed and overweight and she doesn't feel she's a good mother and she loves the depressing saltmarsh where she lives and she likes her job and blah blah. Yes, we get it. 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 infor...

It was great to read an enjoyable story after reading some books I didn't like much. Ruth is not a detective but a forensic archeologist, so you get the story from a different angle. I skipped no. 3 in the series by accident, so that's what I'm going to read now.

I didn't enjoy this episode in the Ruth Galloway series as much as the earlier ones. Perhaps because there were many disparate threads running through it to fully engage me but maybe because there wasn't an archaeological mystery at the heart of it. There's a sudden death at the local museum just before the opening of a historical coffin. Ruth has a new neighbour, an indigenous Australian who is involved with a group called the Elginists who are trying to convince Lord Danforth Smith to repatria...

This fourth book in the Dr Ruth Galloway series is once again a hugely satisfying affair which manages to combine a well constructed mystery with another slice of personal drama in the lives of the quirky cast who surround our forensic archaeologist. Despite the third novel ending with a cliffhanger, A Room Full of Bones starts with a typically humorous episode as Ruth rushes round the King's Lynn branch of Somerfield frantically shopping for Kate's first birthday party the following day. She ha...

Once again, it obviously doesn’t require much brain power to realise that if you are going to dip your toes into a series of crime novels about archaeologist, Ruth Galloway, number four isn’t the best place to start. Oh well, it was the one the library had and so here we are. Actually the adventures of Ruth, her druid friend, Cathbad, and her one time lover, DCI Harry Nelson (the former two seem, bizarrely, to be involved in all the latter’s cases) read more like a soap-opera than crime fiction....

I'm always pleased to hear that another Elly Griffiths novel is on its way and no less this time. The mystery was a little different in this outing, with Ruth, the forensic archaeologist, more removed from the central action than in prior books. But she is very involved with the central characters and these novels are as much about the characters as the mystery.The story involves a small, local museum and the planned opening of a recently unearthed casket of a medieval bishop. Moving on from thi...