In my experience crime writers are a supportive bunch. I was once interviewed by Nicola Upson and found myself talking about inspiration for my novels and finding that a discarded memory of a visit to my grandfather (on my mother’s side) when he was blind was more important than I remembered. I thought he was dead, but he only lived a mile away in Bedford and the reason that I had not seen him in twenty-five years was that he had run off with a woman half his age and my mother had decided that it would not be appropriate to visit or acknowledge his existence. I got into trouble at his funeral by talking to his widow – Vera (had they married? was she also Mrs Nightingale?) Luckily the other interviewee, Guy Fraser Sampson, (author of the “The Hampstead Murder Series”, amongst others) was empathetic as I stumbled upon my real motivation.
One of the reasons I set up this website was to recommend crime books that I have read. I remember the first talk I gave at “Slaughter in Southwold” (I was on before Peter James and I remember thinking the crowded audience were representative of a public yearning for crime before I realized that they were mostly there to hear him). One lesson I did learn, however, was that crime audiences love series, or so the woman who was about to purchase The Appearance of Murder told me, seeking my assurance there would be another book.
Which brings us to the “Ruth Galloway” series by Elly Griffiths. If one were to regard this as a long novel the fifteen individual novel and five short stories (one narrated by Ruth’e cat, Flint) weigh in at about 5,250 pages (or around 1.5 million words). They combine what I have always looked for in a crime novel – a fascinating ongoing story, interesting characters, and gripping individual cases. And I’ve read them all in the last two months and I would urge you to do the same! There are a number of reasons why this is so –
- It’s a masterful set up – Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist (in her late thirties) who is called in by the police in Norfolk to look at some human bones that have been found and tell them whether they are recent (of concern) or ancient (say 2000 years old). So, Ruth is the best that Norfolk has to offer on expertise. It’s obvious therefore that she should be on call for the Police team and involved in further cases when human bones are discovered.
- You get a lot of expertise in body and bone decay (particularly which soils are good for body/bone preservation). As Dick Francis used to say if you read my book you come away with a rattling good story and an expertise in photography (or whatever). In the Ruth Galloway stories the expertise is limited (and important) but others of Ruth’s friends are lecturers in Eng Lit and can identify quotes from Eliot or Shakespeare or the Bible (Ruth has God Squad parents which helps).
- Ruth is overweight (although her sex life is amazing) and therefore prey to the anxieties that affect us all (except perhaps Elon Musk and Donald Trump or perhaps particularly them) and although it is improbable that she and others should be so personally threatened or that Norfolk has so many maniacs (mostly men who threaten woman and keep girls for years in imprisonment when they are not abducting babies.)
- Griffiths doesn’t simply do deduction – she does menace and action as well and uses the historical present! And it’s not just the Paul Temple version where the villain breaks free and then falls to their death either. It is menacing action.
- The main tension in the series is the “will they/won’t they” between Ruth and the policeman Nelson. They have a daughter together (Katie) and Ruth attracts her own admirers as does the good-looking Michelle, Nelson’s wife. The last novel in the series leaves the situation unresolved, as all such situations should be. Griffiths is particularly good at what happens in developments in the relationship that Ruth and Nelson have between the investigations that form the focus of each book. A friend of mine was at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 2024 when Elly Griffiths was part of a panel discussing how to create a series crime character. After 15 books she seemed more concerned with how to end the series rather than sustain it (her publishers seemed to disagree!) I note that The Man in Black & Other Stories, published in 2024, has, on the paperback version “Includes A New Ruth and Nelson Story and Many More”.
But then Elly is a prolific writer and has also written under her real name, Dominica de Rosa, and you can always turn to her Brighton series, or her new novel The Frozen People, which I am reading at present, and seems to feature a shadowy Government unit (chapter one) that uses time travel to solve crimes.
But back to The Frozen People.I look forward to finding out what happens.