A Plethora Of Mysteries
The Locked Room, Elly Griffiths, Mariner Books, 2022
The sun is rising over the marshes, turning the distant sea to gold. The Saltmarsh is coming to life, like a photograph developing, the grasses turning from grey to brown to green, the birds ascending from the reedbeds to wheel across the rosy sky. Dawn.
by Debby Montague
Weirs Times Book Reviewer
The Locked Room is the fourteenth novel in Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway Mysteries. I have been reading the Ruth Galloway series since 2016 when I binged the first seven books in the series and waited impatiently for the eighth, Women in Blue, to be published in May 2016. I was attracted by the setting of the books, in and around King’s Lynn and Norwich in Norfolk, England, because I had visited Norwich long ago. Also, my ancestors hailed from England – the female line from Norwich – and it is always fun to take a look at the site of your roots. A few pages into Elly Griffiths fine writing I was hooked on Ruth, on her saltmarsh home, and the mysteries.
Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist and head of the archaeology department at the University of North Norfolk. In The Locked Room Ruth has been sorting through her late mother’s belongings when she comes across a picture of her own cottage from 1963. Odd because Ruth wasn’t born until 1968 and her parents were Londoners, through and through, and not fond of Ruth’s choice of a home. The picture is one mystery for Ruth to solve. Another mystery follows the next day when Ruth unearths a skeleton in Norwich while her students look on. Is the body one that was moved from a Medieval cemetery or one from the plague pits ? In King’s Lynn, there is even more mystery as Detective Inspector Harry Nelson works with his staff, Judy, Tony and Tanya, to determine if the recent death of a healthy middle-aged woman is murder or suicide. To top it all off there is the mystery of The Grey Lady and Ruth’s missing neighbor. It is a plethora of mysteries in the midst of a pandemic. Fun for the reader, but not for Ruth and Nelson and friends.
Griffiths knows how to set a scene, both the physical aspects and the context. Ruth’s home is next to the marsh, which is beautiful, lonely, and dangerous. She loves the marshes and the peace of the area, but she is also very aware of the dangers of the tides and the isolation. The Locked Room is the third book I have read this year with covid as part of the setting. The first one I read that had the pandemic as background struck me as self-righteous and overbearing. The second book spent more time forcing covid into the story than it did the main characters of the series. Elly Griffiths tone is just right. The action takes place mostly in March and April 2020 when covid spread across the world. Griffiths doesn’t moralize about it and she doesn’t force it. It is the backdrop, not the theme of the narrative.
Griffiths’ characters are engaging, created not contrived. Rex Stout, author of my favorite Nero Wolfe mysteries, once said: I call the two kinds of characters in fiction, either drama or narrative, I call them created or contrived…the one kind of character [created] is the kind that is not made up at all. The author who uses that character, who makes him, has never asked himself a question about that character. The character is just there. I think Ruth, Ruth’s dear friend, Cathbad, and Nelson are excellent examples of Stout’s idea of a “created” character. They are as complete and natural as your favorite sibling or your best friend.
There are layers to the mystery in The Locked Room which draw the reader closer to the resolution, but keep him or her guessing until the end. The mystery moves smoothly through other events in the story and those incidents never distract the reader from the main event. The suspense builds and the tension grows until you give up putting the book down until you reach the climax.
The Locked Room is one of the best in the Ruth Galloway series. Unfortunately, the Amazon blurb tells me that The Locked Room is the penultimate entry and my annual visits with Ruth and Nelson and Cathbad and the rest of the cast are nearly over. I guess I will have to reread the entire series to be prepared for the April 2023 release of The Last Remains.
Who knows? Maybe Ruth will discover the remains of one of my ancestors in that one.
