The Bone Garden
by Tess Gerritsen

Release Date: 14th Jan 2008
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 978 0 593 05777 3
RRP: £14.99

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If you found bones in your garden, would you go digging up the past?

The Bone Garden is a story of two parts – one part historical, one part present day. In the present, recently divorced Julia falls in love with a ramshackled old house and soon after discovers human remains in her garden. Fortunately, the remains prove to be historical rather than of the recently deceased, which doesn’t seem to comfort Julia much and she starts on a journey to uncover the truth about the woman who was unceremoniously buried in her back garden over a century ago...

Luckily, Julia is approached by crabby, old Henry who says that he has come across some letters that might be of interest to her if she wants to know more about her house. Tentatively, Julia opens up to Henry and together they being to unravel the mystery of Rose Connelly and how the events in her life may lead them to uncover the truth about the dead woman in Julia’s garden.

I realise that it is far from original to alternate between past and present, and the author always runs the risk that in so doing they potentially lose some of the fluidity of the plot, or perhaps fail to draw out the main characters sufficiently so as to retain their reader’s interest... but not so for Gerritsen. She masterfully mashes the historical with the contemporary in a lucid and effortless manner. Indeed, we are not only compelled by Rose Connelly’s tragic and surprising life story, but by Julia’s forlorn outlook on life as a divorcee and her need to move on.

Rose Connelly’s story is not entirely dissimilar to that of Jack The Ripper, in the sense that there is a scandalous affair, a baby born out of wedlock and a person desperate enough to try to cover it all up to turn their hand to brutal murder – and the West End Reaper is born. That isn’t to say that The Bone Garden is all blood and guts, indeed, it also has a softer underbelly in the simplistic, yet beautiful love story that emerges between Rose and Norris.

Gerritsen has delivered another wonderfully crafted novel that carries you along like a wave onto a beach. The Bone Garden is thoroughly engaging and highly recommended.

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