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

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In 1969 Frank Churcher, aided by some artistic friends, comes up with a project that will make him very rich and very famous. But that money and fame comes with a huge price for some.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for approving me for an ARC of this book. I’d also like to thank Tandem Collective UK for inviting me to take part in my first listen along. This is the first book of Erin Kelly’s that I have read and I was excited to dive in. Spanning 50 years, this really is an absolutely gifted telling of a twisted tale. I really didn’t see a lot of it coming, as I never do with Kelly’s books! The characters are mostly awful, in that brilliant way of a thriller. Snobby, rich, selfish, self-entitled. All apart from Billie, who I absolutely loved. The incident with the glass just made me love her more! The book is being re-released for the 50th anniversary and Frank has gathered his friends and family to watch him unveil the location of the final bone. What happens next opens up a whole can of worms and soon the Churchers and their close friends, the Lallys, find out far more than they want to about their intertwined lives over the last half a century. The book follows the joint sories of the Churcher and Lally families who have been life long friends.

There are twists and turns galore and one twist that I totally didn’t see coming but also lovely quiet moments like Nell and Billie being invited for lunch by the ladies on the narrow boat next door. Speaking of the characters, with the possible exception of the narrator, Nell, there was just something under the surface that stopped me from ever trusting any of them completely. You got a sense that both households, no matter how close they appeared to be, were nursing secrets, some toxic, all with the potential to see the whole fragile ecosystem they had built up, tumble. There was an inherent toxicity that threads through the familiarity of the two families, some tiny element that I couldn’t put my finger on but that you could feel festering. I really liked the main character of Nell with her splashes of humour and wry observations. I really felt for her when her life was uprooted by the hunt, putting not only her life in danger but also her relationship with Billie, a young woman she is caring for on the line. Their relationship too was really well written capturing the genuine affection as well as the teasing and the tensions.

The story slips between the past and the present and is told from the viewpoints of several of the characters. Would have been easy to lose the pace of the story but I felt this was brilliantly done and really added to the getting to know the characters and understanding their motivations and relationships. So I was delighted to receive a ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers Hodder and Stoughton. For Darrieussecq, Kafka is the “patron saint of insomnia” and his claustrophobic waking nightmares communicate the horror of lying awake at 4 am every night, your mind teeming with thoughts and words, while others sleep. Indeed Kafka blamed his writing – “the imminent possibility of great moments which would tear me open” – for his sleeplessness. Frank Churcher is a fabulous and horrifying invention, as patriarch, father and friend, he has damaged everyone around him, it’s time for him to get his comeuppance. However, for that to happen the family need to be honest with each other and that isn’t going to be easy. Beer writes beautifully, at one point memorably describing an otter disappearing into the dusk as “an insinuation, darker on dark, wraithing upstream like a drop of ink dispersing in gently swirling water”. From messing around in boats and dowsing for water, to searching for chalk springs (water from chalk has passed through nature’s finest filter: “it flows pure, clear and sweet from the Earth”), this is a wonderfully meandering book that blends memoir with nature to demonstrate the simple yet profound truth that “wrapped in every loss is a parting gift. A reminder to live.”Several of the "sub-stories" had me totally gripped too. I found myself quite emotionally involved in some of them, particularly just how much it annoyed me that people devote their lives to "bone hunting" I was worried for Nell and Billie with their own little story, I was upset for Dom, I felt so much pity for Cora. This is a wonderful twisty and twisted saga about two melded families, full of secrets, lies, deceit and maybe some things even darker. Set against all this are the mad and sometimes dangerous Bonehunters - avid aficionados of Frank's illustrated book which sets puzzles and provides clues to the whereabouts of the various bones of the Golden Skeleton. Donnenfeld isn’t one of them. His smartphone is as essential a part of his kit as food and water, with apps replacing compass, maps and even decoding ciphers. Does that ever feel like cheating? “The apps don’t ‘recognise’ ciphers,” he says. “It’s up to the human to do that. What they can do is decode them. It allows us to translate a code in a second as opposed to hours manually.” And, he adds, it’s the connection that matters – even more than the prize money itself. “I want to find the Xavier treasure, but watching my kids finding a hidden clue in artwork or coming up with a unique way of solving – that is a wonderful experience. It’s taught them about creativity, brainstorming and teamwork.” In 2021, the 50th anniversary of The Golden Bones, things are about to be stirred up again. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. With the Churchers reunited, Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.

Stands head and shoulders above the rest, for its originality, its ingenuity and its sumptuous realisation of an intensely problematic family . . . A gorgeously intricate puzzle of a book * Observer *

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This book, though somewhat inspired by that, is entirely different. Far more sinister, as a number of deranged individuals misinterpreted the meaning of the book's premise...leading to dangerous times for the author's family... The story focuses not so much on the treasure hunt but on how the book has affected the families of Frank and Lal. Both men have had their highs and lows and the author does show these within this timeslip story. She also looks in detail at Nell's story, she is the daughter of Frank and someone that has been on the negative side of the publicity that the book has had. Every autumn needs a gothic mystery and this one is a twisty turny treat. Right up there with Kelly's bestselling debut The Poison Tree * The Shift * The book that emerged from this visit to the Rawthey is a paean to what Gerard Manley Hopkins called “wildness and wet”, a rich mix of history and mythology, of science and nature writing at its very best. It’s not just about rivers but also water generally, including its mysterious origins billions of years ago and the invisible rivers of water vapour flowing through the atmosphere: “we come from water, and water runs through us. It carries our chemistry and our stories. It shows us more than itself: all the colours and none.” Kelly explores a number of themes, including the power of myth and folklore, dysfunctional family dynamics, and how out of control some fans can become, especially when fuelled by conspiracy theories.