I was sorry to have missed an author event with Elly Griffiths in Huntingdon organised by Niche Comics Bookshop but it did put Elly’s name on my radar. With the name Elly Griffiths lodged firmly in what passes these days as my memory, I looked in the local library. Picking up a copy there of The Crossing Places, Elly Griffith’s first novel in the Dr. Ruth Calloway series.
Elly Griffith’s, Dr Ruth Calloway is a Forensic Archaeologist, and lecturer at the North Norfolk University. she is called in to help the police when bones of a young child are discovered buried in a salt marsh, close to Ruth’s home. The man requesting her assistance is Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, a man trying to solve the mystery of a child who disappeared ten years earlier. The book is well written in as much as the characters are finely drawn and believable. The landscape and the locations are described with great skill.
However, the plot could be better. This is I understand Elly Griffiths first crime novel, I will try some of her others, to see if she has addressed, what was in my opinion a serious shortcoming.