Tue 22 Sep 2009
A Review by Walter Albert: ELLY GRIFFITHS – The Crossing Places.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
ELLY GRIFFITHS – The Crossing Places. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, January 2010. UK edition: Quercus, hardcover, February 2009.
The Crossing Places introduces Ruth Galloway, a forensic archeologist who teaches at the University of New Norfolk, and lives on the Saltmarsh in a cottage in the midst of a vast wasteland, with the sea only a line of dark gray against the milky horizon and dimly glimpsed in the distance.
Two other houses huddle nearby, with scarcely a hint of current human habitation, a bleak expanse that serves as an apt setting for Griffiths’ first crime novel.
Galloway is happiest when she’s working among her bones, until she is asked by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson to help with the excavation of remains he believes to be those of Lucy Downey, who disappeared ten years earlier. The bones are, in fact, two thousand years old, but when another girl goes missing, Galloway finds herself drawn deeper into Nelson’s investigation — which also brings back into her life her former lover and her mentor, whose ties to Nelson’s case may be more than purely circumstantial.
Griffiths’ husband is an archaeologist, and she gives him and other sources full credit for their police and archaeological expertise. The attention to detail grounds the novel in solid realism, while the use of the present tense for the narration gives it a highly compelling immediacy.
Like most female amateur sleuths in contemporary crime fiction Ruth prefers to follow her own investigative paths, paths that lead her into dangerous situations, with more than a hint of the traditional Had-I-But-Known technique in evidence.
But that hint of conventional vulnerability only made the character more attractive for me, as I found myself both engaged by her determination and irritated by her lapses in judgment.
The developing professional relationship between Galloway and Nelson, even if they are sometimes at odds, is a major factor in the novel’s appeal. The archaeologist and the professional investigator make an excellent team, and I suspect that the series, if it materializes, will take good advantage of this very fortunate pairing.
Editorial Comment: Walter’s right. The second book in the series, The Janus Stone, is scheduled for publication in the UK in 2010:
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Perhaps they’re designed to match the dreary Saltmarsh locale, but these are among the dullest, least appealing covers I’ve included in one post in quite a while.
Also note that the cover of the upcoming US edition spells the author’s first name as “Ellie.” I don’t know if that’s in error or (for some reason) deliberate.
— Steve
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Haveing lived near salt marshes, I can tell you it would take an Ansel Adams to take an attractive picture of them.
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 am
Too bad you didn’t show the cover of the Canadian edition of The Crossing Places. Oddly, though, the cover of the new novel you show is the Canadian one. The covers of the US and UK editions will be quite different.
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Dinah
You’re right. I think the cover of the McClelland and Stewart paperback coming out as a trade paperback next February shows the same sense of desolation along the salt marshes as the other two, but it’s also colorful enough to catch a would-be buyer’s eye. It does mine!
— Steve