REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


ELLY GRIFFITHS – The Crossing Places. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, January 2010. UK edition: Quercus, hardcover, February 2009.

ELLY GRIFFITHS

    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.

ELLY GRIFFITHS

    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:

ELLY GRIFFITHS