Is this cursus cursed?

15. The Crossing Places – Elly Griffiths

The first in the Ruth Galloway series, we meet Ruth, haver of cats and issues with how fat she is. She is also a great archaeologist and has excellent instincts. And now that a skeletal child has been found in the saltmarsh near where she lives, she’s also consulting for the police. There is a child missing from the village, you see, and it’s been about 10 years since she went missing. But the child they found was more of a ceremonial sacrifice type – not that you can’t do that with modern murders – and is from the Iron Age. So, the police are asking, where is the current missing child and then another one goes missing!

The saltmarsh is also the site of a dig Ruth was on years ago with her mentor and her ex-boyfriend who she doesn’t love and maybe didn’t love. They found a henge and her ex-boyfriend almost drowned when the tide came in, so they got together more seriously. However, right now Ruth is on her own and has her friends at the university she works for, her cats Sparky and Flint (such an anthropologist set of names), and her new bestie, DCI Nelson, who keeps taking her on interviews. She’s also got a mystery of letters to solve from DCI Nelson and it’s pretty flowery lunatic stuff.

If you like ancient henges and Druid-based ire and thinking about how dangerous the tides are, this will be a very enjoyable book. If you like morose policemen and mysteries involving kidnapping it will also be enjoyable. Ruth is an interesting protagonist and I really admire that she wants to be left alone, it’s just that if she is, we can’t have a 15 book thus far series, now can we?

 

Ozy understands not wanting to leave the house or the blankets. But Danger Crumples always pulled him into solving mysteries anyway.