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  • Location: London

The Skeleton Key

The Skeleton Key

Why a Booktrail?

2021: A literary treasure hunt

  • ISBN: B09CGFFX5R
  • Genre: Crime, Mystery

What you need to know before your trail

Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden.

The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. Stalked by fans who could not tell fantasy from reality, his daughter, Nell, became a recluse.

But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.

Travel Guide

The London of Erin Kelly

The real locations in the novel are the ones where readers find clues and for obvious reasons these are not on the map above. The London where the book is set and where the story takes place is firmly London and its posher areas. One of the characters lives on a narrowboat and this just sounds lovely.

Clues of locations are discussed and places such as Whitby, Chanctonbury Ring, Lavenham and Swans Lane are all mentioned as having links to mystical settings such as these. Whitby for Dracula for example.

Trail Gallery

BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Skeleton Key

Destination/Location: London   Author: Erin Kelly  Departure: 2021

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