The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths

I picked up this book off my shelf because the sky on the cover looked like our Texas skies for the last who knows how many months - gloomy.  The Crossing Places is the first book in a mystery series by Elly Griffiths.  It is set in Norfolk in a fictional area known as the Saltmarsh and stars Ruth Galloway, an archeologist who came to work and live there while excavating an ancient henge.  The author uses a pen name for this series and she is actually Domenica de Rosa who writes books about Italy.  She credits her husband Andrew, who trained to be an archeologist, and her aunt, who lives on the Norfolk coast, for her inspiration.  The setting of the book is fictional, but it is based on the area of Holme-next-the-Sea (isn't that a wonderful name?) and where the actual Seahenge was discovered.

Ruth Galloway lives in a cottage on the edge of the Saltmarsh, a wild and windswept place, that she fell in love with some years before.  She is drawn into the mystery by DCI Harry Nelson, who comes to Ruth for help in identifying some bones that have been found.  DCI Nelson is afraid that the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who disappeared 10 years before, have at last been unearthed.  Sadly, the bones turn out to be 2000 years old, from the Iron Age.  However, this is the beginning of Ruth and Nelson's association as they attempt to solve the Downey case and find out who has been writing a series of letters to Nelson taunting him.  Then another young girl goes missing.  Ruth is drawn deeper and deeper into the puzzle and finds herself in greater danger than she ever though possible.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  As you all know, I love finding a new mystery series and I have been on a roll lately in that regard.  I was fascinated by the descriptions of the marshland and sea and also by the Norse legends that are peppered throughout.  The mystery was satisfying and I loved Ruth.  She's a great character who is confident in her professional life and just a regular woman in her personal one.  She worries about her weight and her cats and yet she comes to a better understanding of herself and her goals as she gets to know Harry Nelson better and assists him in his inquiries.  Nelson finds Ruth highly intelligent and he comes to depend on her support and friendship as the book progresses.  I look forward to the next book in this series, which has just been released, The Janus Stone.

Other reviews of this book can be found at:

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Disclosure:  This was my personal copy.