Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Books

Books on Monday: Elly Griffiths

Here is a couple of books from author  Elly Griffiths.

Some of you will be spending time on planes and trains this summer. There is nothing better than to sit back and relax with some light reading. Here are two books by author Elly Griffiths. “The Crossing Places” is the first in a series about archaeologist Ruth Galloway. “The Zig Zag girl” is the first of (at the present time) three books about Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens. I have read both and can recommend them.


The Crossing Places (Ruth Galloway Mysteries)
The first entry in the acclaimed Ruth Galloway series follows the “captivating”* archaeologist as she investigates a child’s bones found on a nearby beach, thought to be the remains of a little girl who went missing ten years before.

Forensic archeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties. She lives happily alone with her two cats in a bleak, remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants—not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine days of digging up bones and other ancient objects are harshly upended when a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Galloway for help, believing they are the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor continues to taunt him with bizarre letters containing references to ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter—exactly like the ones about Lucy.

Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth’s remote home?


The Zig Zag Girl (Magic Men Mysteries) Paperback
Brighton, 1950. A girl is found cut in three, and Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick—the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, served with Edgar in a special ops troop called the Magic Men that used stage illusions to confound the enemy. Max still performs, touring with ventriloquists, sword-swallowers, and dancing girls. When Edgar asks for his help with the case, Max tells him to identify the victim quickly; it takes a special sidekick to do the Zig Zag Girl—words that haunt Max when he learns the dead girl is Ethel, one of his best assistants to date.

Another death, another magic trick, and still no killer. But when Edgar receives a letter warning of another “trick” on the way—the Wolf Trap—he knows the Magic Men are in the killer’s sights.

“Captivating.” —Wall Street Journal

“An absorbing read, the debut of another great series.” —San Jose Mercury News

“A labyrinthine plot, a splendid reveal, and superb evocation of the wafer-thin veneer of glamour at the bottom end of showbusiness . . . Thoroughly enjoyable.” —Guardian

“Enormously engaging . . . Griffiths’s plot is satisfyingly serpentine.” —Daily Mail

“Readers will finish looking forward to the next trick up [Griffiths’s] sleeve.” —Mystery Scene

One thought on “Books on Monday: Elly Griffiths

  • You always have such interesting books. I put the first one on my shopping list. It may be a good airplane book later this summer. Thank you!

    Reply

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