Read time: 4 minutes
🎧 Listened in audio 📢 Narrated by Eleanor Caudill ⏱ Duration: 7 hours
Genre: Cozy Mystery 🏷️ Published by Minotaur Books and Tantor Media
Book Blurb:
When Delaney wins a special Hidden Door Festival invitation to artist Ryory Bennigan’s studio, she isn’t sure quite what to expect. What she finds is an elusive fellow obsessed with the Picts, complete with his own version of their blue tattoos and vibrant red hair, recreating the stones they left behind. She also meets visiting paleontologist Dr. Adam Pace, who claims to have an artifact that could reveal what the Picts’ language really sounded like. Before the deal can close, Dr. Pace is found dead. With police dragging their feet, Delaney digs into his past herself, and things get murky fast: fake dinosaur bones, 3D-printing trouble back in Kansas, a reputation that wasn’t what it seemed. Could that past have followed him to Edinburgh? And what does it mean for the Pictish artifact he was trying to sell? Delaney will have to dust off her magnifying glass, or risk becoming a pile of bones herself.
Let’s talk … murder!!!
I am back to Delaney’s world of dark side and bright side in Edwin’s The Cracked Spine. Being a researcher helped her find a career she loved. But she found her ‘home’ when she called into the job vacancy at The Cracked Spine. Her journey with Tom, Edwin, Rosie, Hamlet, and Hector for the past 10 books has been where she belonged.
This mystery takes Delaney virtually back to Kansas where she gets to reach out to her alma mater for more information on a professor who is selling Pict artifacts. Although it is research to find a killer, Delaney’s interaction with “back home,” although makes her miss home. It also makes her realize that she has created a wonderful home for herself in Edinburgh. Eleanor Caudill narrates with the heart that makes Delaney feel real and at home. The accent modulation she does for the Scottish accents and the American accents are just beautiful. I enjoyed listening to her accents, just as much as the mystery itself.
The mystery itself is clean to follow, and rather early on, I figured out who the killer was. I think Paige had set this up pretty straightforward. However, I want to call out that, at least for me, this book was more than just a cozy mystery. This book felt more about the journey Delaney had taken all those years ago. It is about the family she found and created here, and the beauty of the journey life takes you on. I think that’s why Paige kept the mystery straightforward. There was just so much emotion going on in the background that it couldn’t remain only in the background. This book was more emotionally driven than the previous 9 in the series, and I enjoyed this one more for that connection.
I hope this is not the last in the series, and Delaney keeps having more adventures, because I am not done being Delaney’s friend.
Would I recommend it?
Absolutely, without hesitation. Ten books in, and Paige Shelton still found a new way to make me feel something for this found family in Edinburgh. The mystery itself won’t stump you (I clocked the killer early), but that was never really the point of this one. What got me was Delaney looking back at Kansas and realizing home isn’t always the place you started. It’s the place you built. I’m not ready to say goodbye to Delaney, Tom, Edwin, Rosie, Hamlet, and Hector, and I sincerely hope Paige isn’t either.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Book Recommendations
- Site Unseen by Dana Cameron If the archaeological angle in Written in Stone hooked you, meet Emma Fielding, an archaeologist whose Maine dig turns up more than pottery shards when a body shows up at her site. Same academic sleuthing energy, different coastline. Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
- Plaid and Plagiarism by Molly MacRae Another bookshop, another set of women starting over in Scotland, this time in the Highlands instead of Edinburgh. If you love Delaney’s found-family crew at The Cracked Spine, the women of Yon Bonnie Books will feel like kin.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy - Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters For a bigger dose of antiquities and adventure, Amelia Peabody’s first Egyptian mystery is the classic of the archaeologist-sleuth genre. It’s older and pulpier than Delaney’s world, but the artifact obsession is right at home. Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
- If Fried Chicken Could Fly by Paige Shelton Want more Paige Shelton while you wait for book 11? Her Country Cooking School series (with a ghost thrown in) shows a totally different side of her voice, small-town Missouri instead of Edinburgh, but the same warmth underneath. Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman If what got you about Written in Stone was the found family more than the mystery, this one’s for you. A group of retirees turned amateur sleuths proves found family can show up at any age, and any stage of life.
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
What do you say?
Did Delaney find her way home, or has she been home all along? Let me know in the comments below.
Book Links:
Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal
Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org
Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy
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