Review: The Janus Stone (Ruth Galloway, #2)
Gaby Meares
I absolutely fell in love with Dr. Ruth Galloway: a feisty and capable forensic archeologist, in the first book of the series, The Crossing Places. And I fell in love with Elly Griffiths’ evocative descriptions of the Norfolk landscape, so I couldn’t wait to launch into the second book.
The landscape does not feature so much in this novel, and I think it suffers for the lack of it. Griffiths has a real knack for creating menace using the extreme weather and landscape - when she returns to that as she does towards the end of this novel when the mist descends, she is in top form!
Ruth Galloway is now in a tricky situation: surprisingly pregnant from a single ‘encounter’ with DCI Harry Nelson and deciding how and when to break the news to him and her colleagues. While the personal drama takes a little too much centre stage for my liking, she is also called in to investigate the origins of a small child’s skeleton discovered during a demolition of a former children’s home in Norwich.
Ruth’s life is (again) in peril, and she is (again) rescued in the nick of time. I hope this is not going to be repeated throughout the series. Twice is really more than enough - more would be just plain silly and too contrived to be believable.
However, I am looking forward to the next book in the series, and seeing how Ruth Galloway manages to cope with impending parenthood, and another (hopefully) thrilling mystery involving old bones and archeological digs!