{"id":4083,"date":"2021-06-21T16:21:42","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T23:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4083"},"modified":"2021-06-21T16:21:42","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T23:21:42","slug":"elly-griffiths-the-night-hawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/elly-griffiths-the-night-hawks\/","title":{"rendered":"Elly Griffiths: The Night Hawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Elly Griffiths is playing to her strengths with this (seemingly) effortless, blast to read entry in her Ruth Galloway series.\u00a0 Ruth is back home where she belongs, having broken it off with the unfortunate Frank, and she and Nelson are once again having fated and tense encounters.\u00a0 Ruth is now head of the archaeology department at her university, discovering the paperwork and supervision headaches that come with being in charge.\u00a0 She\u2019s especially annoyed by the \u201cnew Ruth\u201d, David, the know-it-all older lecturer she herself has hired.\u00a0 He seems to be tagging along everywhere she goes and trying to tell her what to do.<\/p>\n

As the book opens, the \u201cNight Hawks\u201d or metal detectorists, as they are called in England, are out on the beach at night looking for artifacts.\u00a0 They discover what they think is a Bronze age hoard, but they also stumble across a body washed up on the shore.\u00a0 Ruth is folded in when the Bronze age hoard is found to include a skeleton.\u00a0\u00a0 As Ruth heads over to take a look at it, David tags along.<\/p>\n

Ruth gets to work setting up a dig and Nelson gets another call out in the middle of the night \u2013 shots fired at the ominous Black Dog Farm.\u00a0 As the police move in they discover what looks to be a murder suicide inside, a husband having apparently shot his wife, then killing himself. The couple\u2019s adult children, while shaken when given the news, also confess to hating their father. The man has left behind a note mentioning a body in the garden, and Nelson once again puts Ruth to work to see what she can find.<\/p>\n

Griffiths also folds into her story the myth of the Black Shuck \u2013 a black dog that, if seen, indicates a coming death.\u00a0 The black dog sightings and references permeate the book, adding to the gothic feel of the farmhouse and the creepy all-around atmosphere of any scene taking place there.<\/p>\n

The two cases are, of course, linked, but it takes Nelson\u2019s determined detective work to discover just how they are connected, and the work isn\u2019t all his.\u00a0 Griffiths always includes his team which at this point includes his second, Judy, who is married to series favorite Cathbad (he has much to say about the Black Shuck), and the overeager and ambitious Tanya.<\/p>\n

Underlying all of this is the backdrop of Ruth\u2019s life as a single mother, as a woman taking charge of her professional life, and the tension of having Nelson back in her and Kate\u2019s lives, even at somewhat of a distance.\u00a0 Ruth is a great, fully realized, relatable character.\u00a0 She provides the grounding for this beautifully rendered series, beloved by so many readers, and a big reason for that reader love is Ruth herself.\u00a0 She\u2019s a great creation.<\/p>\n

Griffiths has a satisfying and clever wind up to her story, but she also leaves the reader a bit of a cliffhanger at the end.\u00a0 As always, I finished reading a Ruth book already looking forward to the next one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elly Griffiths is playing to her strengths with this (seemingly) effortless, blast to read entry in her Ruth Galloway series.\u00a0 Ruth is back home where she belongs, having broken it off with the unfortunate Frank, and she and Nelson are once again having fated and tense encounters.\u00a0 Ruth is now head of the archaeology department … 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":[113,602,80,542,603,112],"class_list":["post-4083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-archeology","tag-detectorists","tag-elly-griffiths","tag-england","tag-houghton-mifflin-harcourt","tag-ruth-galloway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083","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=4083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4084,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions\/4084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}