From the very first Ruth Galloway book, The Crossing Places, I've been enchanted with this series. The settings are interesting, from a salt marsh to a World War II airfield to an old children’s home. The author uses local history to enrich her mysteries. As I’ve read through this series, the characters have become old friends. The Limeburners Café was constructed in 2002-4 and the previous home of the café in the Base became available for the ever-growing learning programme at the museum. A further grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund resulted in the building of the Railway Exhibition Hall in 2004 and a further grant from NLHF enabled the consolidation of the de Witt limekilns, together with an exhibition called Life & Lime, which was opened in 2011.

I love these books. I love the characters and the relationships (though could do with less soap opera style content) and the humor is great. I love Kate and seeing her grow & change. I love the settings, though I know some of the uses of some of the ones in this book are made up for the story, but so much is real too. One reason it’s particularly fun reading with Hilary is that she is a local so she knows so many landmarks, towns, etc. that appear in these books. This mystery focuses on 3 missing women and 2 murdered men, the men are homeless and sleeping rough, one of the women are also in this situation but two of the missing women aren't, they have links to the others though and it was interesting thinking of reasons why these women could have been taken. This is a small disused chalk pit which lies 0.7km to the north of the village of Barkway and 4km south of Royston, near the top of the north-facing chalk scarp slopes. As well as a RIGS, it is a Hertfordshire and Middlesex Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve. EXCERPT: Judy feels for a pulse but she knows in her heart that it's useless. She knows by the caked blood around the knife and on Eddie's filthy army surplus jumper. She knows by the angle of Eddie's head, his grey beard on his chest. She is just straightening up when she hears a voice from the street below. Catering: Local pubs include the The Raven in Hexton and The View in Pegsdon. More options including shops can be found in Barton-le-Clay.These two chalk quarries once provided hard chalk to build Cambridge University colleges and lime for cement. Today they support a variety of habitats that harbour some rare plants and insects. Cliffhanger alert! Before you read this book, make sure you have the next book in the series waiting! My mouth dropped open at the end of this book and I barely want to take the time to write a review before delving into the next book, The Dark Angel. The morphology of the valleys on the scarp face slopes contrast with characteristics of those on the dip slope. In this part of the NE Chilterns scarp face valleys are typically steep sided slopes, usually short, blunt ended; often have a flat valley floor marked right angle bends. Their ‘youthful’ appearance suggests they may result from a later stage of erosion.

Sodhi, G.S.; Kaur, J. (September 2001). "Powder method for detecting latent fingerprints: a review". Forensic Science International. 120 (3): 172–176. doi: 10.1016/S0379-0738(00)00465-5. PMID 11473799.Farrant has been working on the chalk-mapping project on and off since 1996. “I would say that not enough attention is paid by the academic research community to understanding the geology of the UK,” he said. “If I was doing this [mapping project] in east Greenland, then I’d probably get funding for it – east Greenland is sexy. And people tend to think that because we have a geological map of the UK, it’s all been done, but actually you can still improve it.”

Oates, J. A. H. (11 July 2008). Lime and Limestone: Chemistry and Technology, Production and Uses. John Wiley & Sons. pp.111–3. ISBN 978-3-527-61201-7. Once again I didn't guess the villain and once again Griffiths has a hair-raising climax. The crimes include several murders and several abductions. One mystery involving shiny white bones (achieved by boiling bones) is unsolved. I wonder if the next book will deal with this mystery since a carbon-14 test revealed the bones to possibly be only ten years old or less.

Information on polishing powders Archived 2011-11-04 at Wikiwix, from the 1879 book "The Workshop Companion"