Wednesday, August 10, 2022

The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis

 
First Line: The Pharaoh's Tomb needed tidying.
 
While archaeologist Neil Watson supervises a dig at a nearby estate where legend states that a young woman was walled up in a room to die for the sin of sleeping with her brother, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson has a double homicide to solve. 
 
Robert and Greta Gerdner were gunned down execution-style in their home, and since Robert was a retired policeman, logical thinking points to the killer being tied to one of his former cases. But as the investigation gathers steam, the facts point in another direction. The Gerdners were just one name on a list of people anonymously given tickets to a tour of Darkhole Grange, a former asylum that's a favorite place to visit for those who love ghosts and having the opportunity to harmlessly scare themselves. When Peterson's team discovers that other names on that list have died mysteriously, Peterson knows that the answer lies in the former asylum.

Now all he and his team have to do is put all the facts together and find the killer before any more people on that list die.

~

One indication of how much I enjoy Kate Ellis's Wesley Peterson series is the fact that I stay caught up with it. Now that I've read and enjoyed The Stone Chamber, I'm ready for the next book to be released. This is a book-- and a series-- to be savored for its criminal investigations, for the history it uncovers, and for the ever-evolving lives of its characters. 

In The Stone Chamber, we learn about anchoresses, devout women who willingly sealed themselves for life into a room attached to a church, although archaeologist Neil Watson and his team learn during their excavation that-- even in the fifteenth century-- there were exceptions to the rule. Readers also learn about the running of asylums in the 1950s, and this was a subject of particular interest to me since a close family member endured some of the same "advanced" treatment during her brief stay in a sanitarium. (Sounds better than asylum, doesn't it?)

I really enjoyed how there was more going on than what met the eye in both stories, while at the same time I worried about Wesley's sick child and wondered if his sergeant was ever going to give birth to her own child. Character-driven readers like me will enjoy this series precisely because there is an excellent cast to concern themselves with.

There were only two slight "head shakers" in The Stone Chamber. One, for the first half of the book, the author mentioned the characters' weight. A lot. (It had to be a lot for it to begin to annoy me.) And two, learning that "...the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act allowed unmarried mothers to be categorized as 'moral imbeciles' and confined in asylums." (I'll see them a moral imbecile and raise them a dozen pompous ignoramuses.)

If you love a book (and an entire series) with an excellent cast, first-rate mysteries to solve, and fascinating tidbits of history to learn, you can't do better than Kate Ellis's Wesley Peterson series. Although it's probably best to begin with the first book in the series, The Merchant's House, it shouldn't be any problem at all to jump in here with The Stone Chamber. You can always go back and read the others once you're hooked.

The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis
eISBN: 9780349425702
Piatkus © 2021
eBook, 370 pages
 
Police Procedural, #25 Wesley Peterson mystery
Rating: B+
Source: Purchased from Amazon.

12 comments:

  1. This comment is from Kathy D. who can't get Google to cooperate:

    "I wanted to comment on your latest book review, and the
    objection you raised which I totally agree with about women
    who were poor put in asylums.

    In the 1920s in Virginia women who were poor were institutionalized.
    And there is a famous case of Buck v. Bell in which Carrie Buck, a
    young poor institutionalized white woman was ordered to be
    sterilized, allegedly because she was developmentally disabled.
    She was not.

    She brought her case against the State of Virginia to the Supreme Court which ruled 8-1 in 1927 that she should be sterilized against her will. She was and so was her sister, who didn't even know it. Both wanted children.

    Adam Cohen wrote a book about this case, and the history
    of involuntary sterilization which began in the 1920s, he
    said, with a lot of immigration. His book is very informative. Because I don't like to slurs against any group of people, I don't want to give the name of it. But if you look up his name and Buck v. Bell, you can find it.

    Later on, of course, a lot of Black people were sterilized
    in the South. Also, Latinas. Cohen says now the problem of involuntary sterilization takes place in prisons.

    I was involved in the movement to end sterilization abuse in New York City in the early 1970s and it won legal restrictions on this horrible act."

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    1. Carrie Buck was mentioned in The Orphans of Davenport by Marilyn Brookwood that I read a few months ago. I have to admit that, sometimes, I wish Congress was 100% women and that they'd start legislating what men can and cannot do with their own bodies. Too many people feel completely comfortable in playing God with other people's lives.

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  2. I like Ellis' work, too, Cathy. What I like is the way she weaves complexity into her plots and sub-plots without burdening the book. She keeps her focus on the main plots, but adds those other nuances that make the books richer. And I do like the Wesley Peterson character. I like the historical information in the novels, too; Ellis does her 'homework.'

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    1. Ellis is so skilled at what she does, isn't she? I wish she were much better known here in the US!

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  3. This series has been on my TBR list for a while. I do hope to get to it sometime this year. This entry sounds like another winner.

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    1. The entire series is a winner, Dorothy. I hope you get a chance to "sample the waters" this year.

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  4. I remember reading about extreme punishments like these happening during the Roman Empire among the nobles.

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    1. Punishments like this are probably as old as time itself.

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  5. I love that one of the main characters is an archaeologist! I think I'd really enjoy this series. And yay...my library has the first book; I'll have to ask them to buy some of the others in the series. :D

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    1. I'm so glad your library has the first book, Lark!

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  6. I enjoy this series, and have been taking my time with it, to make it last. But I'm sure it's time for me to take another dose :)

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    Replies
    1. I used to do that, too, but somehow I managed to get all caught up!

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Thank you for taking the time to make a comment. I really appreciate it!