Book Review: A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway #4)
Griffiths is killing me.
This is the fourth in the Ruth Galloway series, a series which I have come to love.
A Room Full of Bones is probably the strongest in the series thus far when it comes to the mystery plot. It introduces quite a lot of interesting crime/mystery aspects, all seemingly unrelated until Griffiths quite cleverly weaves them together.
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.
The curator was a drug dealer and a group demanding the return of the remains of Indigenous Australians, taken be force to England in Victorian times, for proper burials could also be involved.
As an Australian, I found some of this plot great but was a little perplexed about the ignorance of the modern day English characters. Do they really not know it’s Uluru instead of Ayers Rock? Or what a clapping stick or Didgeridoo is? I did laugh about Ruth’s knowledge coming from Neighbours though.
As I said, I liked the way the mystery plot came together and thought it was very well done (I especially thought the reveal of the Bishop and the way the drugs were being smuggled into the country were very clever) but I just found the lack of Nelson and Ruth investigating sad.
Yes, instead of Nelson and Ruth being on the job, the book had a lot of focus of the owners of the museum, the Smith family. Many many scenes were written from their point of view. I’m not saying they were boring, I’m just saying I would have rathered reading these things from Nelson or Ruth’s point of view.
DS Judy Johnston and Cathbad again play a major part in the book. In fact, when we weren’t reading about the crime/mystery from one of the Smiths, it was Judy who was investigating. Nelson played a much smaller role when it came to carrying out actual police work. *sniff*
I will admit I’m reading these books for the soap opera like relationship of the main characters above all else. And although I will stress that the focus is much more on the mystery in this book than the other three, Griffiths still blessed us with some romantic moments.
Max, a fellow archaeologist who featured in book two, The Janus Stone, turns back up in Ruth’s life in A Room Full of Bones. Ruth makes the decision that she will pursue a relationship with Max and vows to cease thinking about Nelson. I loved the way Griffiths wrote this. It was hilarious.
As she has done in the other three books, Griffiths also left us on a cliffhanger at the end of the book regarding the Ruth/Nelson relationship. And of course I need to rush out and start the next book because of this. As I said, Griffiths is killing me.
5 out of 5
PS I’ve mentioned that Griffiths’ writing is not always perfect. This time the ‘poisonous snake’ references grated. It’s venomous, Elly, venomous. Grrrr.
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