The Janus Stone

When a child’s body is found buried under a Victorian mansion, Ruth is called in to investigate.  The police, led by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, discover that the house used to be a Catholic children’s home. Nelson finds out that, forty years ago, two children went missing from the home. Is the body one of the missing children or does it go back to the days when the building housed an eccentric but very influential family?

Meanwhile, Ruth is involved with the excavation of a Roman villa in the Norfolk countryside. There the archaeologists find a child’s bones buried under a doorway. They think the child may have been a ‘foundation sacrifice’, an offering to Janus, the two-faced Roman God of doorways. The God of endings and beginnings.

Ruth finds herself getting close to another archaeologist on the dig but her relationship with Nelson is also becoming increasingly tense.  Then strange things start happening – headless animals are found on the site and Ruth’s name appears, written in blood. Finally, an even more gruesome discovery makes Ruth realise that someone still believes in the old, savage Gods. Someone who is prepared to kill...