The Skeleton Key: A family reunion ends in murder; the Sunday Times top ten bestseller

Product Information

I appreciate this isn't *sounding* fun but it's genuinely unputdownable: you just have to know what happened in the past and what's happening now, and the tension is great. The Whalebone Theatre is a grand story, sensitively told; Quinn is surely capable of so much more, if she can only bring herself to break a few more bones on her stage. Her best friend, Jay, is devoted to the art of flamenco but his teacher is almost completely blind, and thus can’t help him with the fact that his dancing is an embarrassing mess.

But there is, of course, one crucial difference: Stewart uses pictures as well as words to tell her story, a tale that is as old as the hills, and somehow this makes it new. Incredibly compelling family-secrets story, with the premise of a book like Masquerade by Kit Williams that made it's creator's family rich, and also targets. A large part of this book is Eleanor (who goes by Nell) dealing with the fallout from obsessive unhealthy fandom. In this new work, the author makes the pessimistic, but entirely plausible, assumption that by the end of this century the Earth will be 4C warmer than during the period before industrialisation.

These characters are maddeningly predictable and frighteningly unpredictable in the way of real people. In 1982, two physics teachers solved the riddle but before they could dig it up, someone connected to Williams had made an educated guess and claimed the treasure. The prize of The Golden Bones was a literal set of golden bones which were worth lots of money to motivated – or crazed – Bonehunters.

Where Worsley excels is in her descriptions of Christie’s day-to-day life; we hear virtually nothing of her political opinions as she lives through two world wars, for example, but we do glean a sense of her exceptionalism in the news that she consistently ignored air-raid sirens and simply turned over in bed. Nell attends the launch party with massive reluctance, she tries to stay out of the film crews way and most importantly, that of the obsessive fans. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. The Skeleton Key spins out in multiple directions and readers come to see deep, often disturbing, links among the two central families and immense character flaws in each of these individuals.I was intrigued by the premise of the story and the title but in halfway through it changed direction and the storyline wasn’t what I was expecting. Not surprisingly readers became followers and some of them became obsessed with finding the clues and bones. I liked Eleanor (Nell) not Elinore enough that I was interested in her story and I mostly loved Billie, but the story was messy enough that I honestly was more confused than anything. She has been working as a journalist since 1998, writing for newspapers, magazines including Red, Psychologies, Marie Claire and Elle, as well as writing psychological thrillers.