Tag: Elly Griffiths

MINI-REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE POSTSCRIPT MURDERS (Harbinder Kaur #2)

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Postscript_MurdersElly Griffiths’s second Harbinder Kaur mystery tells us more about her love of Golden Age mystery writers, Murder She Wrote, and Georgette Heyer than it stands as exemplary crime fiction. I did not give an owl’s hoot about this, but to the tightly-plotted-is-best mystery reader, Postscript Murders is a sprawling mess, an octopus of great characters going nowhere in a plot meandering towards the improbable. Still, I liked it. I’m a fan of character-driven mystery, especially when the characters, amateur and professional, work together to solve the crime.

The blurb will lead us by setting things up:

The death of a ninety-year-old woman with a heart condition should not be suspicious. Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing out of the ordinary when Peggy’s caretaker, Natalka, begins to recount Peggy Smith’s passing. But Natalka had a reason to be at the police station: while clearing out Peggy’s flat, she noticed an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy. And each psychological thriller included a mysterious postscript: PS: for PS. When a gunman breaks into the flat to steal a book and its author is found dead shortly thereafter—Detective Kaur begins to think that perhaps there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all. And then things escalate: from an Aberdeen literary festival to the streets of Edinburgh, writers are being targeted. DS Kaur embarks on a road trip across Europe and reckons with how exactly authors can think up such realistic crimes . . .

Um, there’s actually no road trip “across Europe”, unless you count the characters’ miles-long foray from Shoreham-by-Sea to Aberdeen? Truth be told, Griffiths’s plethora of characters, plenty of them “found dead” like Peggy Smith, and convoluted plotting left me confused and indifferent to the goings-on. What did I enjoy? Her detecting crew, made up of adorable eccentrics. (more…)

Mini-Review: Elly Griffiths’s THE NIGHT HAWKS (Ruth Galloway #13)

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The_Night_HawksI avoided coming to the point where I must wait for the next Ruth Galloway (next June, folks), but here I am after tapping the last Kindle page of The Night Hawks. What I concluded was: with every Ruth Galloway, I care less about the mystery and more about the characters. (If you love the series, the review might be fun to read; if not, it’ll definitely have an insiders feel to it.) It’s great to have Ruth and twelve-year-old daughter Kate back in their Saltmarsh cottage: Ruth, now head of archaeology at the University of North Norfolk, the usual gang circling them, especially the complicated relationship with “the love of her life,” DCI Harry Nelson of King’s Lynn police and Kate’s father. DC Judy Johnson, still married to Ruth’s friend, Cathbad, is back; Harry’s family: wife Michelle; baby George, now three; adult daughters, Laura and Rebecca; and my favourite still makes an appearance, DCI David Clough, “Cloughie”. The murder is complicated and atmospheric and involves amateur archaeologists, illegal medical experimentation, and the eponymous “night hawks” discovering a washed-up body at Blakeney Point. Nelson calls Ruth and she is once again part of a police investigation as forensic expert. Their personal lives’ dangerous currents are the narrative’s focus as much as the investigation. The blurb provides further details:

Ruth is back as head of archaeology at the University of North Norfolk when a group of local metal detectorists—the so-called Night Hawks—uncovers Bronze Age artifacts on the beach, alongside a recently deceased body, just washed ashore. Not long after, the same detectorists uncover a murder-suicide—a scientist and his wife found at their farmhouse, long thought to be haunted by the Black Shuck, a humongous black dog, a harbinger of death. The further DCI Nelson probes into both cases, the more intertwined they become, and the closer they circle to David Brown, the new lecturer Ruth has recently hired, who seems always to turn up wherever Ruth goes.

David Brown is irritating and arrogant, though an interesting addition to the cast of characters Griffiths is constantly shifting and developping. Equally compelling is Griffths’s homage to Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles as the farmhouse murder-suicide has Ruth and Nelson sight the Black Shuck on several ominous occasions!    (more…)

REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE LANTERN MEN (Ruth Galloway #12)

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The_Lantern_MenI am nearing the finish-line to the Ruth Galloway series, with only the most recent left to read, the June-released Nighthawks, before I join the thousands of readers awaiting the next installment. Chatting with a fellow-reader in church today, we agreed it’s time for Dr. Galloway and DCI Nelson to be together, pretty please, Ms Griffiths …

Like the previous eleven, The Lantern Men sees the familiar team, this time initially separated by choice or circumstance, come together to find a serial killer’s missing and murdered women (the women are long-buried and I can vouch, for the squeamish, that nothing gross, or violent appears in the novel; sentiments are terrible, but descriptive physical detail is at a minimum). Here are further details from the publisher’s blurb:

Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway changed her life—until a convicted killer tells her that four of his victims were never found, drawing her back to the place she left behind.

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REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE STONE CIRCLE (Ruth Galloway #11)

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The_Stone_CircleAfter that at best forgettable romantic suspense, it was great to be back with Ruth, Kate, DCI Harry Nelson and his team, and the delicious complications of their personal lives amidst a series of crimes, a decades-long missing child, the murder of a King’s Lynn eccentric, and thank the reading gods after the last book’s Italian setting, Norfolk-set in the fog, rain, and cold.

The Stone Circle is definitely a Ruth Galloway which sees the past impinge on the present like the tides that rise near Ruth’s cottage, both in terms of the crime and the lives of its detecting figures. The publisher’s blurb will provide further detail:

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to ‘go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there’. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle’s baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?

Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh – another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle – trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.

As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn’t save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

The bearing the past has on the present is treated in a more reflective fashion than the blurb’s somewhat sensationalist final sentence. Ruth often ruminates how the past plays its role in the present, how it should be studied and respected. Griffiths’ themes are always about solving a crime to put the past to rest, offer restitution to lives lost unjustly, and let their rest-in-peace give way to the living being able to carry on, even thrive. (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE DARK ANGEL (Ruth Galloway #10)

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The_Dark_AngelOf all the Ruth Galloways I’ve read, this is the one I liked least. Not that it would convince me to abandon the series, that, I still adore and anticipate the next read and the one after that, until, alas, I’ll have to wait for the next book to be published.

In The Dark Angel, Griffiths transports her protagonists, Dr. Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson, to Italy, where they become involved in a murder investigation. The blurb sets out some of the details for us:

It’s not often that you’re called to the Italian countryside on business, so when archaeologist Angelo Morelli asks for Ruth Galloway’s help identifying bones found in picturesque Fontana Liri, she jumps at the chance to go, bringing her daughter along for a working vacation. Upon arriving, she hears murmurs of Fontana Liri’s strong resistance movement during World War II, and senses the townspeople have a deeply buried secret. But how could that connect to the ancient remains she’s been studying? Just as she’s getting her footing in the dig, DCI Nelson appears, unexpectedly and for no clear reason. When Ruth’s findings lead them to a modern-day murder, their holidays are both turned upside down, as they race to find out what darkness is lurking in this seemingly peaceful town.

Be warned, dear reader, that I will discuss the series’ happenings and bring about SPOILERS. If you’re keen on reading from book #1, and I encourage you to do so, you may want to return to the review in future.

I’ve realized that one of my favourite things on the blog is to foil the publisher’s blurb. 😉 Truth be told, Ruth jumps at the chance to go to Italy (accompanied by her friend, Shona, and Shona’s son, Louis, whose relationship with Ruth’s daughter, Kate, makes for the only comic relief) because her relationship with Harry, ever complicated, has become more so. Secondly, though Harry, because reasons, is still with his wife Michelle, he goes to Italy when he sees there’s been an earthquake in the region and is worried about Ruth and, as he calls her to Ruth’s annoyance, their daughter, “Katie”. (more…)

REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE CHALK PIT (Ruth Galloway #9)

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The_Chalk_PitIf there’s one thing I love about being on summer break, it’s catching up on my favourite contemporary mystery series, Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway. If you haven’t read them, what are you waiting for when you can have the perfect combination of archaeological (bones!) detail, northern England coastal descriptions, a wonderful, smart, funny heroine, a broody, old-fashioned-copper hero, his engaging team, and literary allusions, wonderful writing, great pacing? With every mystery, Griffiths intertwines it with parallel literary references; needless to say, I love this. In The Chalk Pit, Ruth’s daughter, Kate, has a tiny part in an Alice In Wonderland production. Alice, with its subterranean nightmarish surrealism, reflects Ruth’s recent excavations in Norwich’s chalky tunnels, the world of people who “sleep rough”, lives swept under the rug by society, and DCI Harry Nelson’s pursuit of those who are murdering them and snatching, “disappearing”, Norfolk’s women. The blurb provides further details:

Far below Norwich is a maze of old mining tunnels. When Ruth Galloway is called to examine a set of human remains in one of them, she notices the bones are almost translucent, a sign they were boiled soon after death. Once more, she’s at the helm of a murder investigation. Meanwhile, DCI Nelson is looking for a homeless woman who he hears has gone “underground.” Could she have disappeared into the labyrinth? And if so, is she connected to the body Ruth found? As Ruth and Nelson investigate the tunnels, they hear rumors of secret societies, cannibalism, and ritual killings. And when a dead body is found with a map of what seems to be the full maze, they realize their hunt for the killer has only just begun—and that more bodies may be underfoot.

While this description does credit to Griffiths’s mystery, it doesn’t capture what the series’s fans enjoy as much: the complex relationship between Ruth and Harry, Griffiths’s shifting perspectives as investigations occur, making the mystery more compelling, the likeable secondary characters with fully-formed personalities, including the children, and Griffiths’s ability to create fascinating, multiple settings, whether police headquarters and its interview rooms, Ruth’s isolated coastal cottage, a school-playground, a cathedral, a homeless drop-in centre and shelter, a hospital waiting-room, and a narrative seamlessly immersive in action and introspective in the glimpses we get of the characters’ inner lives. (more…)

REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE WOMAN IN BLUE

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Woman_In_BlueI wasn’t enamoured of the last Ruth Galloway mystery I read, The Ghost Fields, though the previous one, The Outcast Dead, was one of my favourites. My moue of disappointment with The Ghost Fields didn’t deter me from plunging into another Ruth Galloway, The Woman In Blue. Griffiths’s Norfolk-set mystery series is one of my great comfort reads and I’ll never miss a one. I read many series (my favourite being, as you may well know by now, C. S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyrs), but the Ruth Galloways, though not cozies by far, offer a true comfort escape. Maybe it’s because Ruth reminds me of yours truly: living on her own for years, with a gourmandesque penchant for overeating, content with her books, work, and cat, Flint. Now somewhere along the way, Ruth manages (be warned, spoilers ahead, if you’re not up-to-date on the series) to have a tender, not-icky, one-night-stand with my second favourite series character, DCI Harry Nelson, fall in love but retain her proud independence (Nelson is married to the ethereally beautiful Michelle) and the result: the know-her-own-mind, mulish Kate, Ruth’s daughter, five in The Woman In Blue. Ruth teaches at North Norfolk University, has a vain peacock of a dislikeable boss, and is, in each book, embroiled, in her capacity as a forensic archaeologist, in a police murder investigation and once more, is close to her unrequited love, DCI Harry Nelson. (more…)

What Else I’ve Read

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Spy_Among_FriendsThough it’s been a slow-reading year since the fall (thanks, all-consuming day-job), the Christmas holidays offered an opportunity to polish off two books I’ve been making my way through: Ben Macintyre’s A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal and Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway murder mysteries #7, The Ghost Fields. I enjoyed both in that distracted, desultory way one does when other obligations and responsibilities get in an uber-reader’s way. Of the two, Macintyre’s book proved the more compelling. An account of the activities of one high-profile Soviet spy in the UK’s MI-6, Macintyre, rightly so, is more interested in telling the story of how the old boys club that was Britain’s spy agency bolstered, supported, and lauded a traitor, a snake in their arrogant, smug grass. Griffiths’s volume, on the other hand, contained a lacklustre mystery, but my love for Ruth, her five-year-old daughter, Kate, friend Cathbad, DCI Nelson and his team, and Nelson’s wife, Michelle, proved to be strong enough, and their continued relationship complications interesting enough, to keep me reading past the ho-hum mystery plot.  
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MINI-REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s THE OUTCAST DEAD (Ruth Galloway #6)

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Outcast_DeadMy love for Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway mysteries continues with the sixth installment, The Outcast Dead. I loved catching up with Ruth, daughter Kate, and DCI Harry Nelson and his team of DIs, as well as Cathbad and his dog, Thing. It’s the reason I return again and again to the series: because the core characters are likeable and interesting. With every book, while Griffiths has stalled any further relationship between Harry and Ruth, the group grows ever closer, either in friendship, or intimacy. The Outcast Deads sees an addition: a new DI who, Griffiths hints in one sly little scene, may play an ever-more interesting part in Nelson’s life (or this could be a red herring, only more reading will answer my questions) and a possible new love interest for Ruth, an American no less! Events concluding The Outcast Dead, in particular, see interesting developments and changes. As for the mystery itself, while compelling and seeped in Ruth’s love of the “dig,” well, it was emotionally the most difficult of the lot.  (more…)

MINI-REVIEW: Elly Griffiths’s A DYING FALL (Ruth Galloway #5)

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Dying_FallGosh, I love these Ruth Galloway mysteries. Totally hooked. Reader-ga-ga. I have six in the TBR and one anticipated in 2020 before I await the next volume (as I do C. S. Harris’s Sebastian St. Cyr historical mysteries). As always, I try to read each volume slowly and savor, but the last quarter sucks me in; today, errands and chores forgotten, I sat in the old reading chair and inhaled A Dying Fall. 

To sustain a great series, as Griffiths and Harris do, requires a lovely balance of various elements: firstly, there must be an element of surprise in the mystery, its context and motivations; secondly, an element of familiarity, in the detecting figures; thirdly, those familiar figures, if they prove introspective about their lives, which Ruth and Harry prove to be in every volume thus far, and the events occurring around the crime, grow more compelling. So, the new, the familiar, and the nuance in the familiar make for a beloved, anticipated-next-book series. (more…)