The Locked Room is the 14th novel in Griffiths’ marvellous ‘Ruth Galloway’ novels. This would be difficult to read as a stand-alone, so I recommend starting with the first book in the series, The Crossing Places, which introduces all the main characters.
Ruth is a Forensic Archaeologist, lecturing at a university in Norfolk, and consults on occasion with the police, where she meets her on-again and off-again love DCI Nelson. She is working with the police who are investigating a series of apparent suicides that don’t ring true.
Ruth discovers an odd photo while clearing out her dead mother’s possessions, and she has a new neighbour she clicks with but there is something there that she cannot quite put her finger on. On the academic side, the discovery of a medieval skeleton has her students agog at the possibility of finding evidence of the plague pits. And there is the ongoing issue of her relationship with Nelson, complicated and fraught at the best of times.
This is a very topical novel set against the arrival of COVID and the initial challenges of lockdown and worries about illness.
I love Ruth as a character, she is so ‘normal’, with cares and worries we can all identify with, and the cast of characters that surround her are all beautifully written and developed. The police procedural side of the novel is well considered and laid out, and the personal mysteries are equally engaging.
Reviewed by Lesley West
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
My name’s Elly Griffiths, except it’s not really. My real name is Domenica de Rosa and I’ve written four books under that name (see link above). I was born in London in 1963 and my family moved to Brighton when I was five. I loved Brighton and still do – the town, the surrounding countryside and, most of all, the sea. I went to local state schools and wrote my first book when I was a 11, a murder mystery set in Rottingdean, near the village where I still live. At secondary school I used to write episodes of Starsky and Hutch (early fan fiction) and very much enjoyed making my readers cry.
I did all the right things to become a writer: I read English at King’s College London and, after graduating, worked in a library, for a magazine and then as a publicity assistant at HarperCollins. I loved working in publishing and eventually became Editorial Director for children’s books at HarperCollins. All this completely put me off writing and it wasn’t until I was on maternity leave in 1998 that I wrote what would become my first published novel, The Italian Quarter.
Three other books followed, all about Italy, families and identity. By now we had two children and my husband Andy had just given up his city job to become an archaeologist. We were on holiday in Norfolk, walking across Titchwell Marsh, when Andy mentioned that prehistoric man had thought that marshland was sacred. Because it’s neither land nor sea, but something in-between, they saw it as a kind of bridge to the afterlife. Neither land nor sea, neither life nor death. As he said these words the entire plot of The Crossing Places appeared, full formed, in my head and, walking towards me out of the mist, I saw Dr Ruth Galloway. I didn’t think that this new book was significantly different from my ‘Italy’ books but, when she read it, my agent said, ‘This is crime. You need a crime name.’
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