Prompt: A book by or about a woman in STEM.

As I’ve been trying to read as many books as possible that I already own for this challenge. This was a hard one as I wasn’t sure I had anything that quite fitted the bill. And then I remembered that I bought The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths. Dr Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist working for the police helping with murder investigations

What it’s about?

From Goodreads:

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 the 11th book in the Dr Ruth Galloway mystery series. It’s the first one I’ve read. It works as a stand alone but there are a lot of references to the original case that it echoes and the complex relationships between some of the characters have obviously developed throughout the series.

None of this hampered my enjoyment of the book.

Ruth supports the police team to unravel the mysteries of the murder and work put where the mystery bones have come from as there is evidence that they have only recently been moved moved to the newly excavated stone circle.

This is a really well structured mystery with a cast of interesting characters. I loved the character bios at the back of the book. I can see why this series has so many fans and am going to reserve some if the earlier books in the series from the library and see if I can catch up.

The Stone Circle is available from:

Waterstones: click here

Amazon.co.uk: click here