{"id":3682,"date":"2020-06-20T03:32:43","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T10:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3682"},"modified":"2020-06-20T03:32:43","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T10:32:43","slug":"elly-griffiths-the-lantern-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/elly-griffiths-the-lantern-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Elly Griffiths: The Lantern Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

This novel will be released on July 14.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s rare for a writer to sustain interest and excitement through a long series.\u00a0 Elly Griffith\u2019s Ruth Galloway series, now twelve books strong, has had a few entries not quite as great as some of the very best ones, but this one is one of the best ones.\u00a0 There might be a couple reasons \u2013 one, Griffiths has now refreshed herself with a very different series (the Magic Men books). For another, she\u2019s taken this book and skooched Ruth two years ahead in time from the last book and much has happened.\u00a0 It\u2019s only unsettling for a moment – you\u2019ll catch on – especially as all the changes are pretty briskly introduced in the first chapter.<\/p>\n

For one thing, Ruth has left the Saltmarsh, and now teaches at Cambridge. She\u2019s living with Frank, who has really hung in there for her.\u00a0 For another, Nelson\u2019s police squad is changing and evolving, with many of the officers we\u2019ve come to know as readers moving on to promotions and their own units.\u00a0 His son, George, is now a rowdy two year old.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the background for a really interesting crime story.<\/p>\n

I usually intensely dislike when a story backtracks from a killer who is already in prison, but in Griffith\u2019s capable hands, it didn\u2019t bother me for a moment.\u00a0 Ivor March has been put in prison for the murder of one woman, but Nelson is certain he\u2019s guilty of killing at least two more, and he wants a resolution.\u00a0 March agrees, from prison, to tell Nelson where the other two bodies are, but only if he gets to meet Ruth, and she does the exhumation.<\/p>\n

One of the big reasons these books are so magical is Ruth herself.\u00a0 She\u2019s the woman we can all relate to \u2013 a little anxious, a little socially awkward, trying her best to be a good parent \u2013 but she\u2019s still accomplished and good at what she does.\u00a0 In this book she begins to have panic attacks.\u00a0 She can go to a prison, dig up bodies, and attend an inquest, but she also feels the mental results of that activity.<\/p>\n

So when Ruth finds not just another two bodies where March told her they would be, but an extra one, the stakes are suddenly much higher.\u00a0 There\u2019s two families to inform, and a third body whose identity in unknown and must be discovered.\u00a0 When another woman is killed in very much the same manner the detective squad is flummoxed. \u00a0March, after all, is in prison. There seems to have been a \u201ccommunity\u201d around Ivor March \u2013 admiring women, other male artists (Ivor is a painter) \u2013 and it\u2019s to that community that the detectives turn their efforts.<\/p>\n

Griffiths is seamless at providing the reader with a suspenseful novel that\u2019s also an excellent traditional detective novel.\u00a0 That\u2019s rare \u2013 I can count on one hand the writers who are good at that kind of thing \u2013 Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, and Lee Child spring to mind.\u00a0 All revere the form as much as Griffiths does.\u00a0 She\u2019s just approaching it from a different point of view, but her point of view is every bit as indelible, riveting, and unforgettable.\u00a0 In Ruth Galloway, Elly Griffiths has created a character as beloved as Harry Bosch, Elvis Cole or Jack Reacher, but Ruth is one of us.\u00a0 She\u2019s one of the tribe of real, believable women.\u00a0 She is a classic mystery creation.<\/p>\n

This tricky mystery resolves itself in an extremely suspenseful fashion and all the different threads \u2013 both plot and character wise \u2013 are drawn together in a lovely whole.\u00a0\u00a0 I finished it all too quickly and now have the selfish reader\u2019s lament: when\u2019s the next fix?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This novel will be released on July 14. It\u2019s rare for a writer to sustain interest and excitement through a long series.\u00a0 Elly Griffith\u2019s Ruth Galloway series, now twelve books strong, has had a few entries not quite as great as some of the very best ones, but this one is one of the best … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,6,80,364,112,363],"class_list":["post-3682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-archeology","tag-british","tag-elly-griffiths","tag-minimal-cathbad-involvement","tag-ruth-galloway","tag-the-lantern-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3683,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions\/3683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}