The Stone Circle and other Dr. Ruth Galloway mysteries, by Elly Griffiths
This is the twelfth of fifteen mysteries featuring the forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway of the University of North Norfolk and her friends and neighbours, including a special friend in the King’s Lynn police. Elly Griffiths has created an irresistibly real cast of characters. When I finished the book, I missed them so much I immediately had to locate and read the earlier books in the series to learn how the characters had got themselves into their current situations. Then I had to read the following books to see what they’d get up to next.
Irish-born and widely educated, Michael Malone has reinvented himself as the druid Cathbad. Well-travelled and with experience in a various kinds of work, he has now settled in to the important job of child-raising, and also teaches meditation. Cathbad interprets life in terms of the great web of life, and considers sanity “its own kind of madness.” He senses people’s energy and periodically has premonitions. A deeply intuitive New Age man, he’s partner to the eminently practical Judy, a police officer.
Calm and competent, Judy is the one Nelson relies on when the force has to tell the relatives bad news. Judy is not easily taken in by criminals. An understanding of psychology, along with a lot of policing experience have led her to believe that psychopaths are so good at compartmentalizing their lives that “it’s perfectly possible not to know that your son or husband is a serial killer.”
DCI Harry Nelson is a northerner originally from Blackpool. He has a loud voice, an abrupt manner and a tendency to dismiss Cathbad’s talk about the threads that connect us all in the great web of life as “bollocks.” Nelson is a fan of Manchester United, and has “a tattoo and a chip on his shoulder to prove it.” He and his pretty wife Michelle, a hairdresser, have two grown daughters and a young son called George, whose eagerly anticipated arrival has further complicated the conundrum at the centre of the family. Because Nelson, like many good coppers, has had some serious challenges at home.
In theory, Ruth Galloway shouldn’t care for Nelson. He displays a host of qualities she finds irritating. To her annoyance, over the years she’s known him, Nelson has earned her respect, admiration, and more. The single mother of Kate, Ruth has mixed feelings about marrying, and whenever God is mentioned, she assumes an “expression of polite neutrality.” An archaeological expert on bones and someone who “doesn’t always like civilization very much,” Ruth lives with her cat Flint and later her daughter Kate in a remote cabin on the edge of a sea marsh. Again and again, her expertise on bones causes her to get drawn into helping Nelson with forensics in police cases. Inevitably, this leads to danger and more unexpected results.
And then there’s Norwegian Erik. Larger than life, he’s astonishingly brilliant and deeply flawed. How could Ruth help but be a little in love with her former tutor, the man who made archaeology come alive for her? Erik crops up again and again in the books, elbowing his way into Ruth’s memory long after his untimely passing, which was appropriately marked by a traditional Viking funeral.
Griffiths’s deft plotting, brilliantly portrayed characters, and stylish storytelling make this very contemporary series exciting and enjoyable. Salted with humour and laced with literary and cultural references, the Ruth Galloway stories have a cozy feel, in spite of the dark crimes they portray.