Italian Man (Angelo) Attempting Convo with Two English Children (Kate and Louie)

This book is hilarious! It’s just glowing with scintillating moments.

Dr. Ruth Galloway, usually so dour, is getting quite a vacation in Italy! She’s brought along her daughter Kate, her friend Shona, and Shona’s son, Louis. Their host is an archaeologist named Angelo, who knew Dr. Ruth from an archaeology conference twelve years earlier.

In this scene, Angelo meets the children for the first time:

“Do you like the beach?” he asks Kate and Louis, both of whom are staring at him.

“Sometimes,” says Kate judiciously.

“If there’s sand,” says Louis.

“There’s sand at Formia,” says Angelo. “Miles of sand. Not like Brighton beach. I went there once and I thought I was going to die. And the sea was so cold. Like ice.”

“There’s sand in Norfolk,” says Ruth, feeling an obscure loyalty to her adopted county.

“But the sea is always freezing,” says Shona, less loyal.

Kate chooses this moment to fix Angelo with one of her Paddington hard stares. “Are you a policeman?”

Angelo laughs. “No. Why?”

“My dad’s a policeman.”

Angelo shoots a glance at Ruth, who concentrates on her coffee.

— The Dark Angel, pp. 89 – 90

Hugely enjoying — so far — this installment of the Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery series.

Stay tuned.

Nelson’s Boss, aka ‘Super Jo’

He starts to gather up his things.

“Leaving already, DCI Nelson?”

It’s Jo Archer, wearing what he recognises from his daughters’ wardrobes as exercise clothes: leggings and a crop top, giant fluorescent trainers, hoodie tied around her waist. Nelson considers the outfit unsuitable for a woman of her age and position. Not that he knows her exact age, which is a closely kept secret. Clough once organized a competition to find Jo’s date of birth but no one was able to come up with a definitive answer. Jo often implies that she’s nearing ‘the big Four-O but Nelson suspects that it’s actually the big Five-O.

“Yes,” he says, not wanting to demean himself by saying that it’s past five and he has been in the office since seven that morning. “Are you off to do aerobics?”

“Aerobics? You’re out of date, Harry. Hello?” She mimes answering a phone. “Hello? It’s for you. The eighties are calling.”

Nelson waits for her to come to the point — sometimes Jo’s little jokes go on forever.

— The Dark Angel, p. 52

Poor Nelson! “Hello, the eighties are calling.” LOVE IT!!!

Stay tuned.

Dr. Ruth Galloway Goes on Holiday

To escape the unbearable pain of watching her married lover’s wife’s pregnancy progress (that’s quite a mouthful, but that situation has been developing over the span of 10 books), Dr. Ruth Galloway makes an impulsive decision to go to Italy with her friend Shona. Uh-oh. This is not an ideal situation for Ruth, since Shona is beautiful and Ruth is not. In addition, Shona’s son Louis, who is two years younger than Ruth’s daughter Kate, isn’t a nice kid. Not to mention, Ruth had to ditch her classes (who did she get to sub for her on such short notice? Not, surely, the Department Chair, Phil?).

They arrive in Rome:

Kate and Louis, who have, during the flight, moved from being best friends to hating each other, now stand side by side, transfixed. In front of them, two men argue volubly over a taxi and an armed policeman lights a cigarette.

“Why’s it so hot?” says Kate.

“That’s what it’s like in Italy,” says Ruth.

“Where’s Italy?” says Louis.

“Italy is here,” says Kate, crushingly.

Louis starts to cry and Shona picks him up. The sun shines on her red-gold hair and the two arguing men break off to look at her appreciatively. One says something about the Madonna.

— The Dark Angel, p. 42

Self can see where this is going. Ruth should have gone to Italy by herself. That way, she wouldn’t have to constantly be reminded that she isn’t pretty, which means that after Italy her self-esteem will probably be even lower than it was before she left.

Stay tuned.

Author Elly Griffiths, Keeping It Real

Currently reading Book # 10 of the Dr. Ruth Galloway mystery series.

“Sit down, Marta. I was wondering — are you planning to go home this summer? To your mother’s house?”

Marta opens her eyes wide. “Yes, I usually go for some of August. It’s quiet. I can get some reading done.”

Reading. As a professor, Angelo is all in favour of studying but shouldn’t Marta be out studying and taking drugs? Sometimes he despairs of the younger generation.

— The Dark Angel, p. 34

Self has read every book in the series except for two. The last one comes out February 2023. All good things must end.

Stay tuned.

Back to Dr. Ruth Galloway

Having quite a hard time deciding on the next book to read.

This is from Book # 10 of the Dr. Ruth Galloway series (Self isn’t reading them in order — the build-up of angst would drive her crazy!)

DI David Clough and his girlfriend/baby mama Cassandra Blackstock are getting married! So happy for Clough — he’s been a loyal friend to DCI Nelson throughout the series. And Cassie is a member of the local gentry so they can look forward to inheriting Blackstock Hall one day.

There is a marquee on the lawn and a string quartet playing in the entrance hall. Ruth compliments Sally, Cassandra’s mother, on the decor.

“Oh, it was all Cassie’s idea,” says Sally, in her vague way. “But we’re planning to open the hall as a wedding venue, so if you know anyone who’s getting married . . . “

But Ruth’s friends are all mired in domesticity or getting divorced. Only her gay friends are still getting married.

— The Dark Angel, p. 6

A New Katherine Addison

Finished The Night Hawks, a hugely enjoyable read. Elly Griffiths is Master of the Farcical Plot Twist, self loves her dry wit and of course her characters: DCI Harry Nelson; Cathbad the Druid; DI Judy Johnson; DCI David Clough; Nelson’s wife Michelle; DI Tanya Fuller; Nelson’s daughter with Ruth, Kate; Nelson’s oldest daughter Laura; Nelson’s boss Super Jo; Dr. Ruth Galloway and even the newest member of Nelson’s team, Tony Zhang. There are two more books left in the series, Elly Griffiths announced it will end with Book # 15, The Last Remains, coming next year.

Self’s next read is Katherine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead, not quite a sequel to her fabulous The Goblin Emperor, but still in the same universe. Exciting! Self read The Goblin Emperor in 2020 (It was published in 2014, she’s a latecomer to the Katherine Addison party). Though she would have loved to have a sequel to the story of Emperor Edrehasivar VII, a story set in the same universe is close enough.

Addison’s writing is as immersive as Adrian Tchaikovsky’s. Here’s the opening paragraph of The Witness for the Dead:

• In the jumbled darkness of the catacombs beneath the city of Amalo, there was a shrine to Ulis in his aspect as god of the moon. It was thousands of years old, and the carving of the four phases of the moon on the plinth had become almost undetectable, worn smooth by generations of reverent fingertips. Whatever the plinth had supported was long gone, but the shrine remained.

First Thursday of July 2022: Sentence of the Day

The Aforementioned Annoying Person has invited himself to lunch with Ruth, his boss.

Ruth is so irritated that she eats her cake.

— The Night Hawks, p. 184

“What’s That?”

There’s a new character in Dr. Ruth Galloway’s orbit, a new hire in the Archaeology Dept. In fact, Ruth herself hired him, because she’s now Head of Department. This new hire, though, is a fairly annoying sort, because he is so inquisitive, and pops up everywhere, and Ruth catches herself feeling chagrin that it can’t be Nelson instead. Which is bad for Ruth’s emotional well-being.

Worse, he startles easily. At a dig, he looks up at a house, startles, and “let’s out an exclamation.” (p 168) “What is it?” says Ruth. “Nothing,” says David. “Just . . . I thought I saw something . . . someone . . . at the window.”

A page later, Ruth has just gotten into her car (she was at a dig) and is “just searching for her water bottle when David says, ‘What’s that?’ ”

Why does he keep doing that? The man just popped up next to her car (they came in separate cars)

Stay tuned.

Ruth in The Night Hawks

Today it struck self (for the first time) that the name of the main protagonist in this series is Biblical. Even her cat’s name, Flint, seems significant.

In The Night Hawks, Ruth and Nelson seem to have finally arrived at a kind of prickly accommodation: they are co-parents to their daughter, Kate, but Ruth knows she will live the rest of her life alone.

One of the best parts of this series are the descriptions of the salt marsh around Ruth’s cottage. It lies at the edge of sea and land, where her only neighbors are an Australian aboriginal poet who travels the world giving readings and lectures, and a family from London who use their house only as an occasional weekend get-away. Here she is, taking one of her solitary walks:

She remembers Cathbad telling her once that, in extreme stress, we often imagine that we are accompanied by another person, a companion or a protector. This might explain stories from the First World War of soldiers sensing an unknown presence, often described as an angel, marching beside them through the mud and the horror. But today there’s only Ruth. She moves quickly, stepping firmly over the shifting ground.

— The Night Hawks, pp. 142 – 143

This is becoming her favorite book of the Ruth Galloway books she’s read thus far. You don’t even need to read the earlier books to come to a full appreciation of what Ruth has achieved here: as a woman, a teacher, and mother. These are not, actually, standard mysteries. They are more about a woman and the personal choices she makes, over and over again.

Another treat of this series: Cathbad and Judy. Whoa, things have turned out well for our favorite Druid! Love how domestic he is in this.

Stay tuned.

Her Favorite Ruth Galloway Character

Strangely enough, it isn’t Dr. Ruth Galloway. Her favorite character (and she realizes now that he was always her favorite) is DCI Harry Nelson.

Elly Griffiths’ writing is so much better when Ruth and Harry Nelson are apart.

Here is Nelson at home. He has sacrificed so much to be able to keep his house a home:

Michelle goes to bed at ten and Nelson isn’t long after her. They make love in an abstracted, but not untender, fashion and Nelson falls asleep dreaming of buried treasure. He’s awoken by his work phone. It’s ten minutes past midnight.

“Boss.” It’s Judy. “I’m at Black Dog Farm near Sheringham. Gunshots and screams heard inside the house. I think you’d better come.”

— The Night Hawks, p. 40