Book one in the series starts as it means to go on, with bones unearthed at the edge of a North Norfolk salt marsh. Are they recent or ancient? DCI Harry Nelson is desperate to know if they belong to a young girl who went missing 10 years ago, and he calls upon the expertise of Dr Ruth Galloway, an academic whose speciality is forensic archeology. Thus begins the relationship between the pair. It is a faltering start, with Ruth and Nelson coming at life from two very different angles – he a bluff northern family man, she a solitary and bookish type who lives in a tiny cottage out on the marshes. But their work is about to draw them inextricably closer. In the ninth Ruth Galloway mystery, Ruth and Nelson investigate a string of murders and disappearances deep within the abandoned tunnels hidden far beneath the streets of Norwich. Norwich is riddled with old chalk-mining tunnels, but no one''s sure ... In the morning the snow has gone but the wind is still howling around the house, blowing the letter box inwards and sending Flint flying through his cat flap in a ball of outraged fluff. In the bleak midwinter, thinks Ruth, frosty winds made moan. What a dismal carol that is. She is planning a day of domestic goddessery. She doesn’t have to go into work and she wants to have the house all ready for Max’s arrival tomorrow. She doesn’t know exactly when he is coming, Max just said ‘Christmas Eve morning’, but she doesn’t want to get caught unprepared. Also she doesn’t think she’ll feel like housework tomorrow, after a late night at Shona and Phil’s party. No, Max must find a house smelling of pine needles and clean linen, with logs on the fire and gifts on the tree. Damn, now she’s got that Cliff Richard song on her brain. Anyway, gifts on the tree are out of the question now. Even so, some degree of Christmas spirit is still achievable. She decides to make a list. Over breakfast, spooning porridge into Kate and trying to keep Flint off the table, she writes:

Ruth s First Christmas Tree. A Christmas story by Elly Griffiths Ruth s First Christmas Tree. A Christmas story by Elly Griffiths

The tenth book in the Dr Ruth Galloway series sees Ruth wanting to escape from Norfolk and from her complicated relationship with DCI Nelson, at least for a while. Her chance arrives with an invitation from Dr Angelo Morelli at Rome University. Morell … Well, let’s have a drink now,’ says Cathbad. ‘I’ve made some more mulled wine. Do you want some?’ ‘That would be lovely,’ says Ruth, sinking down on the sofa, still staring up at the tree. ‘And I’ve got something for you.’ She takes the piece of wood out of her bag. Set in the 1950 and 60s in (unsurprisingly) Brighton, this series begins with The Zig Zag Girl, published in 2014, with the most recent addition, The Midnight Hour, published in 2021. The books feature police officer Edgar Stephens and magician Max Mephisto and are high on period detail and humour as well as containing some masterful plot work. When Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop, she finds the museum’s curator lying dead on the floor. Soon after, the museum’s wealthy owner is also found dead, in his stables.The Night Hawks, a group of metal detectorists, are searching for buried treasure when they find a body on the beach in North Norfolk. At first Nelson thinks that the dead man might be an asylum seeker but he turns out to be a local boy, Jem Taylor, re … From the latest Scandinavian serial killer to Golden Age detective stories, we love our crime novels! A remark which, like many of Shona’s comments, combines to make Ruth feel both childlike and stupid. She hasn’t been hiding, she is simply chatting with a workmate, and it was Shona who ignored her in the first place. Still, she knows that there’s no point in saying any of this. ‘Hi Shona. You look great.’ ‘Thanks. I feel like a whale. A great big golden whale. Did you feel like this in the last months?’ I feel like that all the time, Ruth wants to tell her. Instead she says, brightly, ‘Not long now. Are you all prepared?’ ‘Almost. Do you want to see the baby’s room?’ Before Ruth can answer, Shona has dragged her away without a word to Bob. Ruth mouths ‘’Bye’ over her shoulder. The hallway and the stairs are now full of people. Ruth sees Liam, Shona’s ex-lover, as well as Freya, a druid friend of Cathbad’s, and several graduate students. For a lunatic moment, she almost thinks that she sees Erik, though he has been dead almost two years. But it’s just another man with long grey hair and a faintly piratical expression. Shona weaves her way through the crowd, kissing cheeks and pressing hands. Ruth plods in her wake, nodding and smiling at people she knows. Surely she can go home soon. Shona opens the door on a little room at the top of the stairs. ‘We were going to use the spare room but Phil needs that for his office. Anyway, this is plenty big enough for a baby. What do you think?’ ‘Babies have a way of spreading,’ says Ruth, but she has to admit that the room is beautiful, pale yellow with a frieze of sun, moon and stars. A mobile of glittering birds hangs from the ceiling. ‘It’s lovely,’ says Ruth. ‘Perfect for a boy or a girl.’ Ruth s First Christmas Tree A Christmas story by Elly Griffiths 22 December The spirits are strong in this one, says...

Ruth Galloway Novels - Elly Griffiths The Ruth Galloway Novels - Elly Griffiths

I discovered Ruth with the first French translation LES DISPARUES DU MARAIS (The Crossing Places) and then read, reread (& again) the whole series. It’s a perfect blend : beautiful writing, sense of place, touches of humour, and of course, the characters… Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich’s web of underground tunnels. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity – now it suggests … When Ruth’s friend Cathbad sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, in a white gown and blue cloak, in the graveyard next to the cottage he is house-sitting, he takes it in his stride. Walsingham has strong connections to Mary, and Cathbad is a druid after al …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 a …

Elly Griffiths - Fantastic Fiction Elly Griffiths - Fantastic Fiction

It’s only been a few months since forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway found herself entangled in a missing-child case, barely escaping with her life. But when constructions workers demolishing a large old mansion to make way for a new development u... A team of archaeologists, investigating coastal erosion on the north Norfolk coast, unearth six bodies buried at the foot of a cliff. How long have they been there? What could have happened to them? Forensics expert Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson are dra … Elly Griffiths's Ruth Galloway novels have been praised as "highly atmospheric" (New York Times Book Review), "remarkable" (Richmond Times-...

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In a chilling entry to the award-winning Ruth Galloway series, she and DCI Nelson are haunted by a ghost from their past, just as their future lands on shaky ground. Historical crimes involving a Victorian child killer may hold the key to several contemporary deaths in this macabre outing for Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist. Ruth has excavated a body from the grounds of Norwich Castle, which was once a pri … Yes,’ says Cathbad, ‘but that would have been a natural process, part of the cycle of nature. But for a piece of wood just to be lost like that, it’s all wrong. These were sacred timbers. You remember what Erik used to say? “Wood represents life; stone is death.”’ Ruth doesn’t argue because she is grateful to Cathbad for offering to babysit. Besides, she knows what he means. She will never forget her first sight of the henge, rising up out of the flat landscape like some prehistoric monster. Erik, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, had fallen to his knees in the centre of the circle. ‘Sacred ground,’ he had said. She remembers, too, Erik’s thoughts on wood and stone. ‘Our journey is from the flesh of the body to the wood of the coffin to the stone of the tomb.’ She shivers. She doesn’t want to talk about Erik, whose ghost still haunts her. ‘I hope Driffield feels better soon,’ she says. When builders renovating a café in King’s Lynn find a human skeleton behind a wall, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway, Head of Archaeology at the nearby University of North Norfolk. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of h …