Dr Ruth Galloway (Archaeologist) Mystery 15, THE LAST REMAINS by Elly Griffiths—Oh Yes!!

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway.”

 

The Golden Age of British crime fiction is marked with authors Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers,  John Dickson Carr, and Josephine Tey, among others. Today, American readers benefit from quick cross-Atlantic publication of British work, as well as masterful translation of Nordic, French, German, and Spanish work, and from authors in African and Asian nations.

 

The “special relationship” of America and Britain reinforces the power of top-notch British mysteries and espionage today. With the fifteenth title in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series from Elly Griffiths, the continued growth and deepening of both Griffiths and her characters enhance a thoroughly satisfying mystery: The Last Remains.

 

Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist who’s developed a forensic side-specialty, thanks in part to being the primary researcher in the field for her area of Britain, one rich with artifacts from the ever-fascinating Druids. Her efforts for the police have also grown in significance because of her personal relationship with the local investigator, DCI Nelson.

 

So when builders renovating a café find a skeleton hidden behind a wall of bricks, Dr. Ruth Galloway gets an immediate summons to the scene—and it only takes her a few minutes to declare it a crime scene and don her forensics hat, along with involving Nelson and his team.

 

At the core of this series, beyond Ruth’s complicated relationship with DCI Nelson, has been her friend and ally Cathbad, a modern Druid opening up ancient ways and bringing both tenderness and wisdom into the circle of friendship that includes Ruth and Nelson. Cathbad’s allegiance to both the pagan past and the children he and Ruth nurture parallels his dual nature of ferocity and caregiving.

 

The Last Remains amps up the tension when Cathbad becomes a person of interest in the teen’s death, then vanishes without warning. However, he has written a farewell and a will, a terrifying aspect that suggests the time to find and save him could be very short, or even nonexistent. His life partner Judy is a police officer but can’t investigate because she’s too close. Desperately she suggests, “Maybe he decided to go on a pilgrimage? The only things is …” her face crumbles, “why wouldn’t he tell me?” DCI Nelson hopes Cathbad, suffering the blurring effects of “Long Covid,” may have amnesia and will turn up. Ruth, however, has increasing reason to doubt such a happy result.

 

By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway. There will be no putting down this compelling mystery until Cathbad’s disappearance can be solved. And in classic heroic manner, to get to that point will require Ruth to risk her own life, even as she struggles to define her future nd her daughter’s.

 

It's remarkable to realize that The Last Remains is the fifteenth book in this series, which began with The Crossing Places. Where Griffiths’ early books offered quirky and lightly twisted plots, this latest one suggests that, a century after the original Golden Age, British crime fiction exhibits a second surge of development underway.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 
 

Who's Luring Forensic Archaeologist Ruth Galloway? THE LANTERN MEN, by Elly Griffiths

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

“Bringing the traditional British mystery up to date with this strong and driven sleuth—not a true amateur sleuth, but an active partner with the official investigation—is the best part of reading this ongoing series from Elly Griffiths.”

A forensic archaeologist with a rising career, Ruth Galloway’s made a major life change as The Lantern Men opens: Forsaking her beloved seamarsh home and the Norfolk university where she’s been mostly blocked from advancement, she’s taken a teaching slot in Cambridge. And with her daughter, she’s moved in at last with Frank, an American who loves her deeply and, she knows, wants to marry her if she’ll just consent.

But despite the rise in academic prestige, Ruth’s aware that she’s putting great strain on her heart: not just leaving the coast, but also walking away from Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, father of her nine-year-old daughter, but securely married and also a new father to a son with his wife. Though Ruth’s aware that she can’t win her daughter’s dad as her own partner under the circumstances, that doesn’t erase the powerful bond that Nelson and Ruth share.

But when Ivor March, a serial murderer that Nelson and Ruth have always felt was holding back on some of his kills, pulls them together, there are frightening red flags, as Nelson reveals the latest twist:

“‘He said that he was willing to tell me where the other two bodies are buried.’

‘My God. That’s amazing.’

‘Yes. I couldn’t believe it. But he had a proviso. He always does. He can’t resist playing games. … He wants you to excavate them. … He won’t tell us where to look unless you do the digging. You don’t have to agree though.’

Ruth stands frozen with her hand on the car door. Ivor March wants her to be involved in the case. A serial killer not only knows her name but is requesting her assistance. Should she refuse? This issn’t her case, after all. She thinks of Frank’s words last night. ‘You’ve got a new team now.’ But, of course, deep down, she wants to do it. She wants to be the one to find the bodies.”

Frighteningly, the killer demands to meet Ruth first, and she won’t refuse: First, she’s eager to get back to the kind of in-ground exploration that engages all her knowledge. And second, it will mean working with Nelson, much better than not seeing him at all.

Yet the proclaimed murderer, Ivor March, is a master psychological manipulator. It’s clear he, like the groupies who adore him, savors being able to tug Ruth’s strings. He even somehow knows about Nelson and their shared daughter—which immediately means Ruth needs to worry about her child’s safety.

The book’s title comes from a myth of mysterious figures of the past, or perhaps even of the spirit realm, who light lanterns at night along the paths through the fens, nearby quicksand and pools notwithstanding, and lure unwary travelers to gruesome death in the muck and mire. March’s own past, as Ruth and Nelson probe from opposite directions, links up with a manipulative group of mingled sociopaths and do-gooders—who can be sure which ones are which?—who’ve trolled the region for women in trouble.

Griffiths is a master storyteller, with two vivid mystery series underway. This is the more rapidly paced of the two (the other is set a half century earlier), and the unavoidable strands of Ruth’s passion—her work, her child, her lovers—act as potent forces while March’s apparently ongoing crime spree nets them all.

Series followers will want to know whether Cathbad, Ruth’s druidic ally, is involved again. Yes, but not deeply this time. Still, the investigative “team” may reunite as needed, as Ivor March’s own “helpers” multiply and risk rises. Suddenly, everything’s breakable, and lives, careers, and love are at stake.

Bringing the traditional British mystery up to date with this strong and driven sleuth—not a true amateur sleuth, but an active partner with the official investigation—is the best part of reading this ongoing series from Elly Griffiths. And it looks like there’s plenty of room for more.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Magicians and Mystery, in NOW YOU SEE THEM from Elly Griffiths

When Elly Griffiths opened her "Magic Men Mystery Series," the threads and tension drew on the experience of a team of illusionists, some professional, helping Britain protect itself from World War II bombings. How the men perceived what they'd done in the war and the echoes remaining in their postwar lives deepened the suspense.

With her fifth in the series, NOW YOU SEE THEM Griffiths has already arrived in the 1960s in her seacoast once-was-resort town of Brighton, and those wartime connections have little meaning. The book opens, in fact, with a funeral for The Great Diablo, and Edgar Stephens, now the Detective Superintendent for the city's police force, sees the adventures of his youth being buried too.

But at least Edgar still has crime investigation to do! For his wife Emma, who loved her work on the police force and who's now parenting three small children, even attending the funeral and seeing Max Mephisto there is painful, as she resents the loss of her main identity:

"So, Mrs. Stephens," said Max, "how's married life?"

"We've been married for ten years now," said Emma, rather tartly. She wasn't sure that she liked Max's new habit of calling her Mrs. Stephens. As a child she'd hated her maiden name, Holmes (the source of much teasing when she entered the police force), but now she rather missed it.

Emma also has reason to feel envious of the new young WPC (woman police constable) on the force, Maggie -- who in turn is sick of the way her colleagues hold up Emma as an unattainably heroic beauty.

These frictions push Emma into her own investigations as schoolgirls in the region begin to disappear, and eventually they tip the balance on how much she'll risk to pursue the criminal and reach the girls in time to prevent more than one murder.

Count on revelations about "mods and rockers," Brighton's smuggling history, and the art of magic -- along with as strong traditional mystery framework that lets Griffiths move into the terrain she's already established so well in her other series featuring archaeological specialist Ruth Galloway: the hard choices women face daily in balancing what they want from life. (There are hints that Griffiths will also tag men's choices in her next book, as Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby work out their own fates in more detail.)

Griffiths is a polished, tight writer, and like her other books, NOW YOU SEE THEM provides a good share of astonishing revelations. Enjoy it as a holiday treat to yourself, and shelve with women sleuths, England, postwar, and sleight of hand.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

One of Today's Best British Traditional Mystery Series, from Elly Griffiths

[originally published by the New York Journal of Books]

“A well-turned-out, exciting, and at times downright nail-biting traditional mystery, with satisfying emotional resonance.”

Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway series enters its 11th title with The Stone Circle, featuring the single-parent archaeological specialist and DCI Harry Nelson, who’s been gradually revealed to his family and his community as the father of Ruth’s child. The pair met and had a brief passionate connection that resonated into deeper emotions, but DCI Nelson was, and is, very married, and the chances of him leaving his wife were always slim.

Now, an anonymous letter threatens to bring back the violence that once brought Ruth and Nelson together. It looks like it’s written by the criminal they battled—a man who’s quite dead. But if that’s the case, who’s writing the letters that continue to arrive?

While the crime-solving team struggles with what the threats mean, Ruth gets looped into the tension too, since the letter writer refers to a “stone circle,” one of the prehistoric religious sites in her region. Distracting her from actually tackling the clues is a new factor: Nelson’s wife Michele is about to add a new baby to his life, and Ruth is realistic enough to see that the baby will crush any remaining chance that Nelson would come to her and her daughter. Not that she wants him to. Well, not really. But it would be nice to have him desire to do so, wouldn’t it?

Griffiths spins a complex crime tale that invades multiple levels of time, historic and otherwise. Her greatest strength is the way she sketches, then delicately shade in, the very human nature of investigators and the way their ability to see the relevant strands of clues, motives, and opportunities is shaped by their personal lives. In the long run, one of the crime officers who persists in following her hunches will be the one to turn the case. But with enough warning to actuallu stop the perpetrator from a new murder? It’s doubtful.

Series fans will appreciate the strong presence in The Stone Circle of Cathbad, a druid and dad, along with his daughter Madeleine, now a journalist with dreams of investigative work herself. But of course the tension ramps up most when the threatening letters begin to rope DCI Nelson and Ruth back together around their daughter Kate and more:

“Nelson’s phone buzzes as he goes up the stairs. He sees ‘Ruth’ on the screen and so waits until he’s in his office to call back.

“’Ruth? What is it? Is it Katie?’

“A deep sigh. ‘No, it’s not Kate. It’s me. I’ve had a letter.’ …

“As Ruth reads, Nelson can almost feel his blood pressure rising. He remembers the letters arriving when Lucy went missing and then later with Scarlet. The same mocking, erudite, menacing tone. She called from the depths and you answered. It’s the same person, he’s sure of it.”

Because The Stone Circle loops back to Ruth and Nelson’s past, Griffiths provides plenty of back-story for new readers of the series. And the combination of an amateur sleuth who’s a professional investigator of graves, Ruth, with a trained police investigator, Nelson, keeps the pace sharp and quick, the insights clever, and the plot twists highly enjoyable.

Trust Elly Griffiths for a well-turned-out, exciting, and at times downright nail-biting traditional mystery, with satisfying emotional resonance and smart current issues raised.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

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British Traditional Mystery with Magic, THE VANISHING BOX, Elly Griffiths

[Originally published in the New York Review of Books]

In the English seaside town of Brighton, there’s an active murderer again—one whose theatrical death scene creation immediately binds together the amazing (if aging) Max Mephisto, stage magician, and his former wartime colleague, Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens.

The Vanishing Box is the fourth in the “Magic Men Mystery” series from British authorElly Griffiths, and it’s set in 1953, when the deep echoes and wounds of The War still shiver in England. But it’s also a time when the future is coming brilliantly to life, as the landlady where the variety stage player lodge appreciates her wireless (radio) but the stage players themselves are eager for the huge audiences that television promises to give them. Max Mephisto’s daughter Ruby, also a magician, is ready to play to that enormous crowd. Max, maybe not so much.

The “Vanishing Box” is, of course, a famous trick of stage magic. Max and Ruby create a father-daughter performance where one after the other disappears, only to return to applause. Behind the scenes, each struggles with romance (an enduring thread in Griffiths’s mysteries): Ruby, in love and engaged to DI Stephens (but always second in line behind his investigations); Max, feeling over the hill (was 44 so old, back then?), and suddenly open to a new and younger lover. How cruel that murder could threaten these possible happy diversions!

At first, it seems the murderer might just have madly posed one beautiful young woman to resemble something from the local stage show, a historic scene from a painting. But when the murder rate escalates, even the police investigators suffer trauma:

 ’Holy Mary Mother of God.’ This was the porter becoming religious with shock.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ said Emma.

Bob was leaning over the body. ‘He’s dead all right.’ …

‘Have you got a telephone?’ [Emma] asked the porter. … She was very grateful to Bob for offering to stay with the effigy that had been [a man] but didn’t quite know how to say so. She followed the porter, whose name she learnt was Norman, to his basement apartment. There she rang the DI and refused Norman’s offer of a whisky ‘for the shock.’ 

Despite the foregrounding of Max and Ruby, the magicians at center stage of the murder scenes, it’s the police investigators that Griffiths places into best perspective. Murder still horrifies them; death wounds them; investigating a killing, whether it’s purely evil or somehow a necessary twist to a shattered mind nearby, shatters their everyday interactions and relationships. How many losses will the Brighton murderer create, as he or she continues to stage death with theatrical trappings and terrible effectiveness?

Griffiths is one of the few suspense authors who can successfully summon the reality of the awkward 1950s, with its uncertainty, its breathtaking possibilities, and its rapid changes that build up a heap of dead customs, vanished family structures, safety wiped away. Staging The Vanishing Box in the last of the old-time variety shows adds to the sense of regarding a vanished era, along with lives lost.

The plot is neatly pinned together, and if the red herrings are not as noticeable as the kisses and courting, well, that’s how Griffiths spins this series. (Her other one features forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway.  And Griffiths has been a winner of the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library Award.) Pick this one up as a good traditional mystery that won’t keep you up at night, but will keep you pleasantly engaged, page to page, like the ones from G. M. Malliet, Ellery Adams, or Barb Ross.

Once everything’s sorted out at the end of The Vanishing Box, quite a few things have vanished, but not returned. Will the series continue? It’s not clear what will come next, but DI Edgar Stephens has new possibilities in front of him—and so does Max Mephisto.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

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Crime Among the Magicians, in THE BLOOD CARD from Elly Griffiths

US cover

British author Elly Griffiths provides two entirely, vastly different series of crime fiction -- and whichever series I happen to be reading becomes the best at that moment for me! This skillful storyteller gets under the skin of her characters -- whether crime solvers, victims, or criminals -- and brings me directly into the scene, eager to explore and to test my own "readerly" sleuthing as the plot twist and the characters reveal themselves in good and evil.

Griffiths reaches number three in her "Magic Men Mysteries" with THE BLOOD CARD, released in America a few days ago. This satisfying "traditional mystery" series began with a set of World War II veterans whose connections to each other involved building a deceptive front to deter a Nazi attack during the war -- a group called the Magic Men for their work with illusion at that time -- and takes them into the strange postwar years of 1950s Britain, when bombed-out buildings filled the cities, food rationing continued for far longer than Americans might have guessed, and a shattered and shell-shocked nation began to rebuild.

In the Magic Men series, postwar rebuilding involves both returns to careers of "before," as master illusionist Max Mephisto has done in the music halls and other gritty urban venues around him, and attempts to carve out new paths forward: like Detective Inspector (DI) Edgar Stephens, who's hoping to soon marry Max Mephisto's recently discovered daughter, another illusionist or, as Americans are more likely to say, magician.

THE BLOOD CARD opens in 1953, with the English excitedly preparing for the royal coronation of Elizabeth II (yes, her reign began in '52, but the coronation came later). There will be a public holiday, mass gatherings, and -- most strangely for Max to contemplate -- people will watch the event on their new parlor devices called televisions.

To Max's amazement, his almost dying stage career suddenly gets a boost from an invitation to perform in a televised event as part of the coronation festivities. (It's his daughter Ruby who's suggested him for the show, a rather humbling situation.) Meanwhile DI Edgar Stephens can't pay much attention to his old friend Max, because he has the death of a local fortuneteller on his hands -- a death that's looking like murder, but very hard to investigate due to the closed community of Gypsy background to which the dead woman belonged.

UK cover

When Edgar's investigation doubles and crosses into Max's circle of stage illusionists, mesmerists, and such, there are startling common elements -- including the presence of a playing card known to magicians as the "blood card" (the ace of hearts) and a playbill for a stage performance from years ago -- the crime investigation takes on national importance. After all, the circumstances suggest a possible terrorist attack to coincide with the royal coronation!

Griffiths deftly raises little-known details of the performing world and England's postwar recovery, as well as the stresses of her characters, from Edgar's premarital strains to Max's struggles with aging in a young person's field, and to the heartache of one of Edgar's constables, Emma. Not everything will be resolved, either -- as the fortunetelling family in the book's foreground, the Zabini clan, could have told us from the start.

Grab a copy for the pleasure of reading a traditional British mystery with highly memorable characters, paced impeccably as Griffiths once again demonstrates crime-solving storytelling at its smoothest and best. Highly collectible -- you may in fact want both series, and thank goodness, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has brought them across "The Pond."

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

More Summer Reading, British "Traditional" Mystery with Archaeology, THE CHALK PIT, Elly Griffiths

British author Elly Griffiths writes two distinctive mystery series, one set "today" in and around Norwich, England, rich with archaeology and very British themes, and the other involving stage magic and illusion plus murder, circa 1950. I'm a fan of both.

Just released this week in the US is the newest in her Ruth Galloway mystery series, featuring a forensic archaeologist who's also a single parent in a very complicated network of university politics, local police, and the remnants of England's past -- which in Ruth's case includes a significant friendship with a modern-day Druid. No fancy paranormal side effects in here, unless you count the occasional strong intuition that Ruth and her friends may experience. Instead, THE CHALK PIT provides the perfect summer read: a strong traditional mystery with powerful motives (money and power!), and heart-stirring secondary plotting among the homeless in Norwich.

This time Ruth's investigating some human bones that turned up in an old tunnel, part of an excavation for a future restaurant-and-event locale, where the money at stake pushed the agenda. Hurry up and declare the bones insignificant remains of some medieval resident (definitely not royal) and get them out of the way. Ruth's willing ... but, as she settles to discussing them with DCI Nelson, head of the Norwich police team and a mostly former flame of Ruth's, her doubts take shape:

"Anyway, it's likely that the bones are medieval or even older. There's no flesh on them and they look very clean. It's just ..."

"What is it, Ruth? I know there's something you're not telling me."

"It might be nothing. But one of the long bones was broken in the middle and there were cut marks on it. And the bones were so clean, almost shiny. It reminded me of something that I've read about. Pot polish."

"Pot polish? Sounds like something my granny would do."

"I doubt it. It's when bones are boiled soon after death. The polish comes from the contact with a roughly made cooking vessel."

"Jesus wept." Nelson chokes on his last crumb of cake. "Are you saying these bones were in a cooking pot?"

While Ruth keeps that aspect as quiet as possible, she's getting crowded by fellow academics who want to push into the underground labyrinth with her, and some have motives that worry her. Meanwhile, Nelson's team, especially DS Judy Johnson, has another reason for interest in those old tunnels that were once part of the region's chalk-mining industry: Could homeless people in the area become crime victims of someone living "underground" and kidnapping them, or worse?

Griffiths keeps the twists spinning, enlivened by Ruth Galloway's confused "love life" that tugs her in as many directions as her work does. Lively storytelling, quick surprises, and a lot at stake make the book a very good vacation from ordinary daily life -- and from the lawnmower and garden!

This is the ninth in the series, and it lacks the tang of some of the earlier titles when Ruth's Druid friend Cathbad saw more action. There's no need to read the others first -- Griffiths is a pro in terms of setting the scene in a sequel by now -- but for the best enjoyment, I'd recommend splurging for the summer reading pile and picking up the earlier titles in softcover (The Crossing Places, The Janus Stone, The House at Sea's End, A Room Full of Bones, A Dying Fall, The Outcast Dead, The Ghost Fields, The Woman in Blue). FYI, the earlier titles veer a bit more toward the dark and dangerous side than THE CHALK PIT does. (It's all about taste, isn't it?)

Great that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has brought this series across the Atlantic.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

British Murder Mystery, Traditional Yet Chilling, from Elly Griffiths, SMOKE AND MIRRORS

It's not easy for American readers to keep up with the top-notch British crime fiction, when the American authors are the ones getting the big full-page ads and the point-of-purchase bookshop displays. Thanks to a partnership between UK publisher Quercus and pub giant Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), though, two strong series from Elly Griffiths are now available here. And her newest title, SMOKE AND MIRRORS, arrives in the costume of a traditional British murder mystery, with perservering CID officers and a snow-covered seaside resort town.

But with deft story twists and an appeal to the dark side of classic fairy tales, Griffiths quickly takes her detectives and the pantomime cast for "Alladin" in 1951 Brighton into terrain that's deceptive, wicked, and downright eerie. All of which could be expected if you're already reading this "Magic Men Mystery" series featuring professional magician and brilliant illusionist Max Mephisto.

Max has a deep connection with Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens, who is leading the search for a pair of vanished children: A decade earlier a British defense effort against Hitler's forces involved Max and Edgar and a handful of others -- the so-called Magic Men, established by the military -- in a secret operation to confuse any invasion of England's coast by faking the presence of strong defenses there. The trust forged in the operation allows Max to work sometimes with Edgar, a big plus for the CID because Max grasps how the illusion of a successful crime can be built. And busted.

As the investigators begin to realize that the criminal they're pursuing and the children missing are somehow connected with a staging of a twisted sort of "Hansel and Gretel" by a group of children, Sergeant Emma Holmes begins to step out of her chilly, self-protective role in the local force, following her hunch to talk with a teacher who'd encouraged the children's drama efforts, especially by young Annie, already writing scripts:

Miss Young did not protest that Annie preferred sciences. Instead, to Emma's surprise, she drew out a folder from a pile on her desk.

'She wrote plays and stories too. I was just looking at these before you came. Morbid really. But reading them brought Annie back for a moment.'

Emma looked a the first sheet of lined paper. ... The writing was perfect primary-school script: 'The Wicked Stepdaughter.'

Emma started reading: 'It's the stepmother who's meant to be wicked but mine's just stupid, a fool who doesn't know what's coming to her. No, I'm the wicked one.'

Is Annie, one of the missing children, actually manipulating her own disappearance? If not, has she somehow threatened an adult who is punishing her and the community? And what does all this have to do with another child's stage-related death from before both world wars, in 1912?

It takes a lot of courage by several people, some in the police force, some performers, some children, to resolve the case of the missing children. And there are more at risk.

Griffiths ties together the damages of wartime Britain, the failings of damaged minds, and the dangers of being an astute child, into a wintry and fast-moving novel of intrigue and suspense. Max Mephisto's sleight of hand and mind will tilt Edgar's insight ... but most important will be the way the investigators follow up even the smallest detail, as the snow buries clues and pushes the pace in Brighton and on Max's stage.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS is one of the best new crime novels for this autumn. No need to read The Zig Zag Girl (its predecessor) before this one, but you may want to get both at once, for a highly satisfying read.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Prime British Crime Fiction from Elly Griffiths: THE WOMAN IN BLUE, Ruth Galloway #8

The first book in the Ruth Galloway crime fiction series, The Crossing Places, won the Mary Higgins Clark award for 2011 -- and of course, the award took place some time after the book hit the stores. Now in 2016, author Elly Griffiths presents the eighth in the impressive sequence: THE WOMAN IN BLUE.

This series features forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway, a professional at university level who still has to fight for her career, against the sexist and crass assumptions of people like her boss. Single parenting in a community that's gradually becoming aware of her daughter's father -- married and unavailable -- Ruth juggles child care and teaching and investigation, in a jumble that feels all too familiar for modern life: nothing's easy, there's never enough time, and all of it matters intensely.

As THE WOMAN IN BLUE opens, one of the most appealing of Ruth's friends, Cathbad, himself a parent and also a modern-day British druid, witnesses a "woman in blue" (how can I not think of T. S. Eliot's vision in blue, "in Mary's color") standing in an ancient Christian cemetery. "As Cathbad approaches, she looks at him, and her face, illuminated by something stronger than natural light, seems at once so beautiful and sad that Cathbad crosses himself. 'Can I help you?' he calls. His voice echoes against stone and darkness."

It's understandable that Cathbad wonders whether he's seen a real person, or a vision, even if that would belong to a faith very different from his own. But as Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson quickly discovers, along with the young woman's corpse, she's been a patient at an upscale drug rehab facility nearby. The blue "cloak" is a dressing gown, even if it does look -- to Nelson's usually unimaginative eye -- like a druid's down attire.

Ruth Galloway quickly becomes part of the investigation: partly because Nelson and his team count on her for her expertise (although usually for Iron Age skeletons!), and mostly because an old friend from archaeology school is in town for a conference of woman Anglican priests heading toward higher positions in the church hierarchy. When Hilary Smithson reconnects with Ruth, there's a powerful ulterior motive for getting back in touch: threats against her life, which Hilary hopes that Ruth can help assess, based on all the modern-day police connections that Ruth's clearly experienced in the past few (very public) years.

"The thing is," says Hilary again, cubing the cubes, "there are some people who just don't like the idea of woman priests."

Ruth knows. She's read about it in the Guardian. Though, to be honest, she usually skips those articles on the way to the TV listings.

"Most women priests get abuse of some kind, people saying things, refusing to come to their services. When I first started getting the letters I didn't think anything of it. A rite of passage ... Then, at the end of last year, the tone seemed to change, to become nastier, more sinister. But what worried me most were the references to archaeology ... because it was specific to me. ... He must have found out that I was coming to this conference."

Ruth's dubious about her ability to help -- but soon the twists of events threaten her carefully balanced life, including her relationship with her daughter's father, and when her own slant on the past comes into play (archaeology matters!), she moves several steps ahead of the police in grasping the motive for the spate of deaths of blond young women like the one "in blue."

Elly Griffiths spins a tight, taut, and neatly twisted crime plot where the significant characters -- Ruth, Nelson, Cathbad -- must learn something deeper about themselves and their part of England in order to solve the crimes and stop their escalation. Each time I read another in the Ruth Galloway series, I marvel at how few people know these. It's something about the English source of the books, of course ... THE WOMAN IN BLUE was release on the other side of the Atlantic in February, reaching us quietly in May through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. If I could summon up a change in the way these books arrive here, I'd send Griffiths on a major tour, where she could reveal her own secret life (her name's not really Griffiths! -- see her website for more) and connect with the smart savvy readers who appreciate her books so much. (I reviewed numbers 6 and 7 here.)

But then again, that would get in the way of writing Ruth Galloway investigation number 9 -- and I want more of these, for a very satisfying shelf of mysteries that I re-read with pleasure. Now that I think of it, maybe that's how I'll celebrate the start of official summer in a few weeks: by returning to the start of the series and reading them all again. Yes!

Magic and Murder, in THE ZIG ZAG GIRL, Elly Griffiths

I've become a devoted reader of the Ruth Galloway series from British author Elly Griffiths. Just released in the US this month is the start of her newest Magic Men series, THE ZIG ZAG GIRL -- and while I missed the abrasive and oddly vulnerable Galloway at first, the premise of this new series is fiercely exciting, and I enjoyed the book very much.

Consider the British seaside town of Brighton in 1950, a mere five years or so after the end of World War II -- bombed-out buildings, struggling economy, and a bare-bones police force, in which Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is trying to ignore his wartime losses and move forward. But when the body of a young woman is sent in three pieces, to his specific attention -- under the rank he had during the war -- he's got to take this one personally.

Edgar's war wasn't something he took pride in afterward. Recruited (after the Norway disaster) into a small corps of specialists in magic, sleight of hand, and psychology, swiftly labeled the Magic Men, he'd helped create false armaments along the English coast to trick the German pilots overhead. But things happened that cost lives, and he's ashamed and in an odd sort of mourning, as well.

Now it's all got to be exhumed, so to speak, along with his connection with the clever stage magician Max Mephisto. Yet Edgar and his friends appear to be reliably one or two steps behind the murderous person stalking them. What's it about? Who's to blame? How can he protect his friends (and incidentally not lose his job)? It's clear almost immediately that the mutilated body is meant to suggest a faulty magic trick called "the zig zag girl," and when the victim is identified, the links to the wartime crew are inescapable.

Soon Edgar's having to show a murdered Magic Men friend, Tony, to the man's aging parents:

"Anthony had a very important job in the war," said Mrs Mulholland. "He was with the Secret Service."

"I know," said Edgar, thinking, as he had thought at the time, that the Magic Men was the least secret secret mission that he had ever encountered. Everyone in Inverness knew all about them. Tony kept himself in free drinks -- and worse -- by telling the locals that he was part of a crack commando team.

The nimble way that Griffiths paints the war, the resulting friends-with-friction, and the challenges of chasing a killer without knowing the motive -- well, it adds up to a rattling good story and plenty of genial jests among the crimes.

I didn't bond quite as tightly here as I did with the earlier Griffiths series; there's so much going on, and there are so many red herrings and twists of plot, that I think the characters aren't shown as deeply in THE ZIG ZAG GIRL. But I trust Griffiths as an author, and I'll ride along with the series, hoping that this enjoyable but fairly light introductory title will lead me into emotionally more complex and compelling waters.

In fact, since Griffiths admits her own family connection to the characters, I'm positive this is going to be a very good direction for her, and I am eager for the next book. This is one of those moments when the book in hand isn't quite as powerful as the ones that have already flown ... but there's good reason to trust that it's an opening act for an upcoming winner.
**
PS -- The author's website is not up to date, but still gives a good look at the earlier series: http://ellygriffiths.co.uk

Forensic Archaeology and World War II Betrayal, in THE GHOST FIELDS, by Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway #7)

US cover

The long shadows of old crimes are familiar phenomena for Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist whose home turf is Norfolk, England: rich with dark history, which Ruth has already found dangerous to her career and her life in the previous six books in Elly Griffiths's strong and exciting series. In THE GHOST FIELDS, a body from the Second World War emerges where it shouldn't be -- in a buried airplane (the wrong kind!) in a field where a development is scheduled for construction. And when Ruth begins to probe the life and death of the quickly identified corpse, Fred Blackstock, threats from the locally significant Blackstock family multiply. But the dangers, though real, are amorphous and the killer or killers are hard to identify, in the midst of a tightly closed family full of secrets.

Griffiths braids far more tension into the mystery, through the stresses Ruth and her friends undergo in the meantime. Fans of the series already know the complicated situation Ruth's in, as a (mostly) single parent raising a precocious daughter whose father keeps stepping back into the picture; as an academic struggling against a thoughtless and periodically malicious department head; and as an undecided lover of an American whose visits to the region destabilize her heart, her routines, her hopes.

Then there is the druid component: Ruth's close friend Cathbad "just knows things" and sometimes they are relevant to untimely deaths.  Not to mention the advent of DNA testing to the region -- suddenly tying together people and differentiating others, causing shocks to family structures, old beliefs, and the current policing force where Ruth's on call.

A large part of the pleasure of this series is Ruth herself, sharp and knowledgeable in her field, but quickly insecure in crowds and among people who don't seem quite sane. With the entire Blackstock family meeting that criterion, one way or another, Ruth's in trouble until she can resolve the journey of Fred Blackstock's corpse. Griffiths alternates points of view, and when we're "inside" Ruth, we're on an all-too-human roller-coaster of determination, discovery, and dismay.

Ruth watches as Fred's coffin is lowered into the grave. It's a moment that never ceases to shock, no matter how long ago the death. The crowd begins to disperse and, conspicuous amongst the sea of black, she sees Cathbad and Hazel, both wearing purple cloaks, standing to one side of the grave. The TV cameraman is filming them surreptitiously. And there's Nelson, accompanied by Tim Heathfield and Clough, moving forward to talk to Sally Blackstock. The cameraman, who has, up until now, been the soul of discretion, allows himself a few shots of the grave and of Nell Blackstock walking away, clutching the folded flag to her chest.

Ruth stays back. She doesn't much want to talk to the TV people or to the family. She is still wondering whether to attend the 'celebration' at Blackstock Hall. ... When she thinks of the scene last night, she is struck by a slight but real jolt of fear. She remembers Old George howling in the pets' burial ground and standing at the head of the table proposing a toast.

Madness, menace, and the constant mayhem that defines managing a challenging career and parenting -- that's what Ruth is in for, and THE GHOST FIELDS (a term for the old airfields in the region) provides suspense and intrigue and quick, sharp jabs of dry British humor as well.

Elly Griffiths is on a good roll here, tossing Ruth's often chaotic life with generous helpings of crime, sleuthing, and suspense. It's a great series -- halfway between amateur sleuth and professional investigator -- and although there are advantages to reading all the books in order (start with The Crossing Places), THE GHOST FIELDS is very readable on its own. Of course, it's likely that if you read this one without the others, you'll soon be sleuthing the shop and online shelves, looking for the other six. But there's nothing wrong with that adventure! At least you are not going to have to face dinner with the Blackstocks on your own.

[PS: Published in Great Britain by Quercus; brought across "the Pond" by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. And released for publication in the United States on May 19, 2015.]

English Mystery Series by Elly Griffiths: THE OUTCAST DEAD

This is the sixth Ruth Galloway mystery from Elly Griffiths, who earned a blurb from Louise Penny ("gripping"!) and won the 2010 Mary Higgins Clark Award. And THE OUTCAST DEAD just goes to show that there are always more good mysteries ahead to read, because ... this is the first time I've heard of the author and the series, but I definitely want to collect all the earlier books and go on reading these!

In some ways, Griffiths provides us with a bit of a replacement for Elizabeth Peters, because Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist. But Griffiths takes us into modern archaeology instead, opening with a ceremony at Norwich Castle to bless the bodies in the paupers' graves, the "outcast dead," that Galloway witnesses because of her curiosity and general sadness about those long-forgotten people on the edge of society. Not far away from them is Ruth's own exciting discovery, probably the body of the long-lost Mother Hook, a criminal whose exploits are part of local child-frightening lore. Hanged in 1867 for the murder of five children, Mother Hook (she has a primitive hook prosthetic replacing one hand) is an entirely unexpected discovery, a body outside the usual burial ground, undisturbed in all these years of maneuverings at the castle.

As the discoverer, Ruth, a relatively reserved and shy person (nerd might be accurate), has fallen into the toils of her boss, who is engineering a visit from a TV crew. And it looks like Ruth will have to take a major role in front of the camera. But at the same time, she's distracted when her close friend DCI Harry Nelson tackles the death of a child nearby, followed almost immediately by two child abductions where the criminal seems to be targeting women who use day care -- that is, who allow a "Childminder" into their lives.

Griffiths has a complex community to draw us into, where children are not just delivered to a "childminder" when parents work, but parenting itself is also shared among Ruth and her friends, whose children range from infants to teens. If I'd read the previous five books, I would have followed this a bit better, but it wasn't all that hard to catch up. Griffiths is expert in revealing the depth of character -- and the ready access she provides to Galloway's emotions and impulses makes the quick plot with its unexpected twists especially intriguing.

I'm also hooked on the terrain of this one -- flat lands near the beaches of eastern England. In Ruth Galloway's eyes, her landscape is layered with the history and stories of the people who've lived there centuries ago. And as she probes the evidence around her Mother Hook discovery and the added information coming from an attractive American professor visiting the scene, she looks in new ways at the complex relationship of parent, child, babysitter, and ... baby snatcher.

A good solid mystery with a lot of character. It hits American markets tomorrow (came out in January in the UK), and deserves a warm welcome.