Review of "Bright Hair About the Bone" by Barbara Cleverly

Our heroine and budding archaeologist Laetitia Talbot is in the middle of another sterling mystery. Laetitia is stunned when her godfather, Daniel Thorndon, a noted archaeologist himself, is stabbed to death while on a dig in Burgundy, France while researching the private library of Edmond d'Aubec. But before he dies, Thorndon sends Laetitia an ominous message using a code the two of them had made up when Laetitia was a child. Laetitia is determined to find the person who killed her godfather and joins another dig in Burgundy where the remains of an ancient church was recently discovered. The plot thickens when the body of a stable boy who worked at d'Aubec's is discovered in the dig. Whereupon, Laetitia gets permission from d'Aubec's to look at her godfather's research into some ancient manuscripts in order to further her investigation, only to put herself in danger.

This is a very worthy follow-up to the first Laetitia Talbot novel, "Tomb of Zeus", even though this book was actually written first. Again, it has the feel of an Agatha Christie, if only because of the intrepid young woman, the background of archaeology and myth, and the British upper class characters. Barbara Cleverly keeps us in suspense as well as keeping us interested in her characters' welfare.