{"id":961,"date":"2013-04-01T17:34:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T23:34:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=961"},"modified":"2013-04-01T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T23:34:16","slug":"elly-griffiths-a-dying-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/elly-griffiths-a-dying-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Elly Griffiths: A Dying Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When books by Erin Hart, Deborah Crombie and Elly Griffiths come out all at once it\u2019s almost an embarrassment of riches.\u00a0 To my mind, the three women have some similarities (and some differences), but enough similarities of the soul that reading three in a row, one by each, is a soul encompassing experience.\u00a0 Elly Griffiths\u2019 was the last one I picked up of the triumvirate, and it was like slipping into pages written by an old friend.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ruth Galloway, Griffiths\u2019 main character, remains unapologetically herself \u2013 and readers love her for it.\u00a0 She\u2019s a bit over weight, she doesn\u2019t care about her clothes, she loves her job, and she\u2019s passionate about her toddler, Kate.\u00a0 Because Kate\u2019s father is Nelson, a married police detective, Ruth\u2019s life is nothing if not a complicated web of relationships.\u00a0 Playing with this theme, Ruth hears first of the death of an old university friend, and then she receives a letter from him asking for her help.<\/p>\n

The thoughts of her university days bring up all sorts of memories, and as she reviews her catalogue of friendships, few of her classmates are actually working as archeologists.\u00a0 Her dead friend, Dan, was, and not only that, he thought he\u2019d made the kind of discovery that would make anyone\u2019s career.\u00a0 He thought he\u2019d found the bones of King Arthur.<\/p>\n

More than intrigued, Ruth schedules her holiday to coincide with a visit to Dan\u2019s discovery in Lancashire.\u00a0 Everyone thinks she\u2019s nuts to go north for a holiday, but she packs up Kate \u2013 and Cathbad \u2013 and heads north to check out the Pendle Forest.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ruth is getting threatening text messages telling her to lay off \u2013 something she ignores, but it adds to the suspense as she discovers the details of Dan\u2019s death in a fire, and begins to meet his friends, a perfect snarl of academics who are nothing if not the personification of conflicting and complicated relationships.<\/p>\n

As it happens, Nelson\u2019s family is from the same area and he\u2019s on a family holiday at the same time.\u00a0 He\u2019s horrified when, as he\u2019s accompanying his wife on a garden tour, he looks out the window to see Cathbad pushing a stroller with his daughter in it. There\u2019s an inevitable uncomfortable meeting \u2013 as all parties are aware of Kate\u2019s parentage except for Nelson\u2019s mother, who takes a great shine to Cathbad and invites them all over for tea.<\/p>\n

Griffiths has a brisk, uncluttered storytelling style that zips the reader through a tricky mystery, several murders, highlights the thrill of the discovery of the possible King Arthur, and ties all her plot threads together in a very suspenseful finish.\u00a0 She plays a bit of a narrative sleight of hand towards the very end of the story that\u2019s very effective.\u00a0 She always gets to your heart by the end of her stories, and this wonderful read was \u2013 happily – no different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When books by Erin Hart, Deborah Crombie and Elly Griffiths come out all at once it\u2019s almost an embarrassment of riches.\u00a0 To my mind, the three women have some similarities (and some differences), but enough similarities of the soul that reading three in a row, one by each, is a soul encompassing experience.\u00a0 Elly Griffiths\u2019 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-british"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}