The Janus Stone – BooksPlease

Spell the Month in Books is a linkup hosted by Jana on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month. The goal is to spell the current month with the first letter of book titles, excluding articles such as ‘the’ and ‘a’ as needed. That’s all there is to it! Some months there are optional theme challenges, such as “books with an orange cover” or books of a particular genre, but for the most part, any book you want to use is fair game!

The optional theme this month is Stars/Sky. All these book covers include the sky in different weather conditions, and one also has stars.

J is for The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths, crime fiction

Forensics expert Ruth Galloway is called in to investigate when builders, demolishing a large old house in Norwich, uncover the skeleton of a child – minus the skull – beneath a doorway. Is it some ritual sacrifice of just plain straightforward murder?

I like the mix of archaeology, mystery and crime fiction in Elly Griffiths’s books. This one has a double dose, with mythology and Catholicism running through the narrative as well as the police procedures. Ruth is an interesting character, not your usual detective, she’s overweight, self-reliant but also feisty and tough. She has to be with everything that’s thrown at her and as her investigations lead her into great danger.

U is for Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

In this book the author describes how she bought and renovated an abandoned villa. It’s full of the pleasures of living in Tuscany – the sun, the food, the wine and the local people. It makes me want to do the same! It’s nothing like the film they made of it – the book is much better. Bella Tuscany is the follow up book with more details about the restoration of the villa and its garden, plus recipes.

I used this book in June’s Spell the Month in Books, but I’m using it again because it’s perfect for the theme of Sky/Stars this month!

L is for The Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman

This is the story of Tom, a lighthouse keeper on an isolated island, Janus Rock, and his wife Isabel. Janus Rock )a fictional island) is nearly half a day’s journey from the coast of Australia, where the Indian Ocean washes into the Great Southern Ocean. When a boat washes up on the shore of the island it holds a dead man – and a crying baby. Tom and his wife have a devastating decision to make.

Y is for The Yorkshire Vet by Peter

I’ve watched the TV series and loved it. This book is one of four books by Peter Wright, telling his life story, charting his working relationship with the famous ‘James Herriot’, from work experience with him as a lad, to taking over his practice in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.

Packed full of laugh-out loud moments, heartbreaking stories and transporting tales of his love for the animals and people of this breathtaking part of the country. Covering his bucolic childhood growing up on a farm right through to the heady days of his successful Channel 5 TV series, Peter’s warm nature and professional attitude shine through every page.

The next link up will be on August 3, 2024 when the optional theme will be Water.

I loved The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths, which is just as well as I’d been looking forward to reading it after I’d enjoyed her first book The Crossing Places. Sometimes, a second book does not live up to the promise of the first, but in this case I think her second book is even better than the first. I just wish Elly Griffiths hadn’t written them in the present tense. I always have to overcome my dislike of it, until I become engrossed in the story and forget the tense.

From the Back Cover

The house was once a children’s home. DCI Harry Nelson meets the Catholic priest who used to run it. He tells him that two children did go missing forty years before – a boy and a girl. They were never found.

When carbon dating proves that the child’s bones predate the children’s home, Ruth is drawn more deeply into the case. But as spring turns to summer it becomes clear that someone is trying very hard to put her off the scent by frightening her half to death…

My view

Once I’d become engrossed in this book I read it very quickly, eager to find out what happens next. It does follow on from The Crossing Places in that it features the main characters in that book and continues their story. Ruth is now pregnant, but she’s not sure she wants the father to know, although it’s obvious she’s pregnant and Harry has his suspicions about the identity of the father.

Two archaeological digs are in progress, one in Norwich where the body of a child is found under a doorway, which is where the book’s title comes from. Janus is the two-faced god of doors and openings and also of times of transition and change as he could backwards and forwards at the same time. The Celts and sometimes the Romans used to bury bodies under walls and doors as offerings to Janus and the god Terminus. The other is on a hillside outside Swaffham, where bones have also been found under a wall.

When he is in his full Druid outfit, complete with flowing purple cloak, Cathbad can look impressive. Now, with his greying hair drawn back in a ponytail, white coat, jeans and trainers, he looks like any other ageing hippy who has finally found a nine-to-five job. Ruth is pleased to see him though. Despite everything, she is fond of Cathbad. (page 87)

Cathbad plays an important part in the tense ending to this book as Ruth is abducted, resulting in a dramatic if slow chase through the fog-bound Norfolk rivers:

It is like voyaging into the afterlife. they have left behind the solid world and entered into a dream state, moving silently between billowing white clouds. There is nothing to anchor them to their surroundings: no landmarks, no sounds, no earth or sky. There is only this slow progress through the endless whiteness, the sound of their own breathing and the lap of the water against the sides of the boat. (page 309)

It’s the suffocating, unearthly nature, the grey nothingness and the uncertainty that makes this so frightening and tense. I have Elly Griffiths’s next book, The House at Seas End, lined up to read very soon.