Dry Bones
Dry Bones An Oxford-based PI mystery
by Sally Spencer Severn House
Mystery & Thrillers Pub Date 01 Feb 2018
Review
Oxford with its longstanding history and traditional disparity between classes makes for an excellent mystery setting. (Morse anyone?). The followup to The Shivering Turn is equally as good. Dry Bones is skillfully plotted, showing just how long hidden murders can affect the present (in this case 1974). Jennie Redhead’s friend Charles, the bursar of St Luke’s College, begs her to investigate when two skeletons are discovered walled into the cellar of St Luke’s - one from the First World War and one from the second. Who were the murdered men? What links the two to St Luke’s? Sally Spencer moves adeptly between past and present revealing a complicated tale of evil deeds, long hidden secrets and honor. Jennie’s investigation will tax her belief in the ones she loves most and will challenge long held friendships. Not only that it will lead to murder.
Dry Bones is an excellent mystery, eloquently written with plenty of twists. Jennie Redhead is an exceptional lead, with a mind and tongue as vibrant as her red hair. I've read numerous mysteries by Sally Spencer and I have to say her Jennie Redhead novels are her best work yet.
5 / 5
I received a copy of Dry Bones from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.
--Crittermom
Description
Private investigator Jennie Redhead finds her loyalties divided when she investigates the decades-old murder of a college student. Oxford, 1974. In the cellars beneath St Luke?s College, a sealed medieval ventilation shaft is opened up to reveal human bones. Two bodies, buried thirty years apart ? but is there a connection? Desperate to protect the College?s reputation ? and finances - the bursar, Charlie Swift, hires his old friend, private investigator Jennie Redhead, to find out the identities of the two victims. But as Jennie pieces the clues together, it becomes increasingly clear that Charlie knows rather more about the murders than he?s admitted. As she uncovers a series of scandals stretching back more than sixty years, Jennie is forced to question how well she really knows her old friend Charlie Swift ? and whether she can trust him?
