"If you have never read these books, then start right now ..."
One of the best presents I was given for my birthday this year was a copy of Elly Griffiths' latest Dr Ruth Galloway mystery. My friend Wendy Cope gave it to me ... we've been reading about Ruth and her companions alongside one another since The Crossing Places, which was the book that launched the series in 2009. For sixteen years, at the rate of almost a book a year, we've lived with Ruth and followed her life and her adventures. We've got to know her lover, Harry Nelson, a married policeman who heads a team of men and women who are all fully rounded characters. If you love the Ruth Galloway books, you belong to a kind of gang.
Appropriately, a book called The Last Remains is the final book about this particular detective and her friends. I was therefore almost bereft when I came to the end of the story. I live in hope that some years further down the line, there will be a case which brings everyone back one more time ....but till then, Elly Griffiths has created a glorious collection of stories about one of the most likeable of detectives.
From the start, Ruth was more like a normal person than most detectives. She was, for one thing, not thin. She describes herself as needing to lose weight, though this aspect, which made me warm to her, is less important as the books go on. Throughout the series, her relationship with Harry Nelson is the spine that holds the narrative together, gives it an emotional core absent from many other books, and provides a continuity that makes Griffiths' fans go back again and again to see how those two are getting on. I know Elly a little and every time I meet her I beg her to make things end well for our hero and heroine. I'm saying nothing about what happens. You will have to read the book. Of course the fact that the top policeman has a distinguished archaeologist to help him, makes the answers to the mysteries much more interesting. Their adventures take them in all kinds of unexpected directions, and there's a thread of magic, worlds beyond our own, the slightly supernatural which runs through the books. Cathbad, Ruth's friend who is a Druid, carries most of the weight of these themes in the novels and he's one of her most attractive creations. Mystery surrounds him even in the midst of the most prosaic situations.
Because we've lived with these characters for so long, we have followed a great many stories through recent history. Cathbad almost died of Covid. Ruth has a daughter with Nelson, and we watch Kate grow into a young person who reflects well on the way her mother has brought her up. Nelson's family also help in Kate's development and are present in her life. A situation which could have become very fraught has always (even through many ups and downs, some of them very dramatic) been managed in a way that's both civilised and plausible.
The stories are set in Norfolk and bring that county most beautifully to life. Ruth lives in one of three cottages on a salt marsh and we are always made aware of what every location looks like. Griffiths never over -describes, but can paint a scene in very few sentences so that we feel we are there. Her dialogue is pitch perfect. It never sounds artificial, but as though real people are talking. She's very good at animals and I have grown especially fond of Ruth's cat Flint. Cathbad's dog (called Thing) is a bull terrier of impeccable character but I have to confess to being one of those people who have a 'thing' about that breed. My bad. Thing is totally lovely in every respect.
In The Last Remains, the body of a young woman is found behind the boarded-up wall of what used to be a café back in the day. Suspicion falls on a group of students and their charismatic and creepy tutor who used to frequent the café long ago. Cathbad, who was then called Michael Malone, was one of their number. What does he know? How involved was he? When he goes missing, there's a possibility that he may have something to hide. Alongside all this, Ruth's University is about to axe the Department of Archaeology. A colleague of hers has something surprising to tell her. Nelson's wife, Michelle, who had been living apart from her husband, has returned to Norfolk. There's an awful lot going on and it's miraculous that Griffiths manages to keep all the balls in the air so brilliantly. Also, there's a reference in this novel to events that happened in the other books, so that you're reminded as you read of all that you've read before. The solution is elegant with a really poignant and unexpected revelation towards the end of the book.
I will now go and catch up with other novels by Griffiths that I haven't read yet. And yes, she has written many other novels. She's one of the most prolific writers of mysteries at work today.
Goodbye, Ruth and co. Reading about you for all these years was a real treat and I hope that one day, you might return. I want to see what Kate becomes. I want to see Ruth and Nelson as grandparents. I want more....
If you have never read these books, then start right now. You won't regret it.
The Last Remains is published by Quercus.
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