Book # 7, the Dr. Ruth Galloway Series: THE GHOST FIELDS

Self read her first Dr. Ruth Galloway book in April, when she was still at River Mill. And she’s been barreling along ever since. She bought # 7 at Waterstones in Oxford, then decided to order # 8. Though the books can be frustrating (many love triangles, “Secret” Fathers, etc etc), the series is addictive.

In Book # 7, our heroine is stuck in a creepy old house with two members of the British landed gentry who are both dotty. There’s a fierce storm, roads have flooded, so Ruth has no choice but to stay put. One of the creepy men enters her room in the middle of the night and . . .

Thankfully, nothing happens. This is Dr. Ruth Galloway, not Hannibal Lecter, lol!

In the kitchen, Ruth makes herself a cup of tea and puts some bread in the giant toaster, presumably bought with the B & B in mind. There’s no sound from upstairs. She hopes that both Georges will sleep late. For ever would be nice.

— The Ghost Fields, p. 331

Quintessential Phil Trent: Ruth Galloway # 6

If someone had told self three months ago that she would be on Book # 6 of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway mystery series, she would have said, Get out! Yet, here we are.

In the last book, The Outcast Dead, there was minimal Ruth/Nelson interaction, but plenty of Judy/Cathbad angst. That was okay, since self likes Cathbad. She’s not as enthused with Frank, the American TV personality who seems to have only two outstanding character traits: 1) He flirts with Ruth; 2) He is not Nelson.

Anyhoo, he’s gone back to Cambridge or wherever he is based, and Ruth is back to digging! And digging Ruth is the best Ruth, in self’s humble opinion.

Another really enjoyable aspect of Ruth Galloway’s character is how much her boss irritates her. Of course, he is her complete opposite: hates to do any work (any kind of work), but likes fundraising, and also making public appearances.

He shows up during a dig, early in The Ghost Fields, to which self can only say: HALLELUJAH, HOPEFULLY FIREWORKS!

“Do you want to have a look at today’s finds?” asks Ruth. Although she excavated the skeleton yesterday and bagged up the bones herself, there are still a few interesting objects emerging from the trench.

Phil pulls a face. “It’s awfully hot,” he says, as if the weather is Ruth’s fault.

“Is it?” says Ruth, pushing back her damp hair. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Phil looks at her quizzically. He doesn’t always get irony unless he’s concentrating.

Excellent scene!

The Adorable Kate

Self is beginning Book # 5 of the Ruth Galloway mystery series, Dying Fall. Ruth and DCI Harry Nelson’s secret love child, Kate, is now 18 months old.

In Book # 4, A Room Full of Bones (4 stars, highly recommend), Kate was just a year old and given to one-word pronouncements. Self HOWLED every time the little tyke uttered the word “Dada.”

Since her real Dada has been forbidden to visit by his wife Michelle, Kate flings the word at any male who comes within her radius. “Dada,” she says to Cathbad. “Dada,” she says to Ruth’s one-night stand.

Ruth takes her to visit a deathly ill Nelson in the hospital. “Dada,” Kate says to him, making him tear up. Ruth thinks to herself: If he only knew — !

Ruth, who struggles with a weight problem, and is perennially short of time since she is a single mother and teaches at the University of North Norfolk, tends to take shortcuts.

She really must get a grip and stop eating Kate’s food. If someone asked her if she’d like a gourmet meal of sucked toast soldiers, congealed egg and soggy carrot sticks, she’d say no thanks very much, but that’s what she eats every time she clears the table. Ruth has never been thin but she has an uneasy feeling that now she’s less thin than ever. Still, all that digging will have used up a few calories. Ruth takes another piece of fusilli.

“Mine,” says Kate.

— Dying Fall, p. 16

This Kate, with her perfectly timed one-word pronouncements, is quite the stand-up comedian.

Stay tuned.

The Very Posh Randolph Smith and His Mum

Still avidly reading A Room Full of Bones, #4 in Elly Griffiths’ smashing Ruth Galloway mysteries. Self brought it with her to read on the train to London today. DCI Nelson’s become deathly ill after a trip to Brighton with his wife, the beautiful and saintly Michelle. Whitcliffe, Nelson’s boss, is not that dumb: he makes Judy Johnson the SIO. This earns her the resentment of David Clough, who thought he should have been named SIO.

Anyhoo, self loves the case: all to do with a lord who owns a stable of race horses and a museum, and his dysfunctional family: eldest daughter Tamsin, a London yuppie; only son Randolph, a handsome wastrel who reminds Judy of Robert Pattinson; and good-looking yet lost youngest child Caroline (who may or may not be appearing in future books; self thinks Caroline makes a good partner for Cathbad).

Judy gets Clough to go with her when she pays a visit to the family, where they are entertained by Randolph (who surprisingly seems a lot less wan after SPOILER his illustrious father’s untimely death). What really kills is the conversation between Randolph and his mum Romilly (a noblewoman with the heart of a bleeding liberal, who would have thought) after Judy and Clough leave:

“They’ve gone,” he says.

“Was it Nelson? He was quite bright, I thought. Not your usual policeman.”

“No, the woman. Judy something. And another man. Rather an oaf but good-looking, if you like that sort of thing.”

— A Room Full of Bones, pp. 232 – 233

Up to this point in the series, David Clough has been distinguished for three things: being a little thick, being utterly loyal to his boss Nelson, and being a junk food addict. Self imagined Clough as looking like John C. Reilly, that curly-haired actor who is in a lot of indie movies and has a vague resemblance to Will Ferrell. Now, Randolph the Robert Pattinson look-alike declares Clough is “good-looking”? So he is a bit like the Armand Gamache sidekick in the Louise Penny mysteries, Jean-Guy Beauvoir? Who IS an oaf, but is also handsome.

Stay tuned.

Top Dialogue, A Room Full of Bones

Yes, self has finished K: A Novel. She blazed through to the end last night. And a good thing she got it over with; the end was sad.

Now reading Book 4 of the Ruth Galloway mystery series by Elly Griffiths. There is such incomparable angst!

In the scene below, DCI Nelson must have tea with a Lord Smith:

“My son. Would you like biscuits? I’m diabetic so I’ve got some ghastly sugar-free rusks. But there are some Hobnobs somewhere.”

Nelson thinks he would like a Hobnob very much indeed. He is just wondering about the mysterious son (maybe he’s locked in a turret room somewhere) when the door opens and a handsome, dark-haired man bursts into the room.

“Morning all.”

Smith does not turn around but plunges the cafetiére with unnecessary violence.

“What time do you call this?” he says.

“I don’t know,” says the man pleasantly. “What time do you call it?”

“You’ve been out all night. Your mother was worried sick.”

“I doubt that,” says the man who must, surely, be the errant Randolph. Ma never worries about anything. Ah, coffee. Superb. I could murder a cup.”

— A Room Full of Bones, p. 57

Self’s Third Ruth Galloway

Self loves these books. She brought the first two with her to Northern Ireland (from a stack she’d ordered during the pandemic and never had the time to read). She bought two more when she got to Belfast. Now she’s reading The House at Sea’s End.

Ruth Galloway is now a mother. Her daughter, Kate, is a few months old. She is still juggling work (as a forensic archaeologist and university professor) and motherhood, not to mention fending off the fawning Baby Daddy. This scene is very droll. An acquaintance, Tatjana, drops by unexpectedly for a two-week stay:

. . . the baby, not content to remain snoozing picturesquely in the background, is making a bid for centre stage, cooing and emitting high-pitched yelps like a miniature cheerleader. Ruth thinks she is being rather sweet but she is scared to take her attention off Tatjana for too long. So she sits on the floor with Kate, who is propped up by cushions, occasionally handing her a brightly coloured toy which Kate ignores in favour of chewing the TV remote control. Tatjana has, so far, not looked in Kate’s direction once.

Nelson had stayed only a few minutes, long enough for Tatjana to pronounce him ‘interesting,’ which, Ruth discovers, is her highest term of praise.

“How come you are entertaining a policeman in the afternoon, she asked, raising her eyebrows slightly.

— The House at the End of the Sea, p. 137

The Janus Stone: Spoiler Alert!

This book is every bit as good as The Crossing Places. No, it’s actually better. So much funnier! Though the parts told from the murderer’s point of view (thankfully, brief) are gut-churning. Do not read any further if you do not want to know the identity of the murderer! The dialogue is A++.

Ruth screams, so loudly that it startles both of them. Roderick stops and looks at her quizzically.

“Why are you frightened?” he asks.

“What do you think?” shouts Ruth. “I’m stuck here on a boat with a madman. A madman with a knife.”

Roderick looks quite hurt. “I’m not mad,” he says. “I’ve got a first in classics from Cambridge.”

From what Ruth has seen of Oxbridge graduates, the two are not mutually exclusive.

— The Janus Stone, p. 287

This conversation follows immediately after a scene where we see DCI Harry Nelson running around like a chicken without a head. Eventually, he figures out (through the timely appearance of Cathbad) that he’s been worried about the wrong daughter. Self wanted to pull her hair out.

Stay tuned.

The Janus Stone: Tanya

Going at a snail’s pace through Book 2 of the Ruth Galloway series, self is enjoying it so much. The last book series she was into was The Expanse (nine books and a TV series), and that was two years ago.

Anyhoo, she is within closing distance of the end, and there’s an annoying policewoman named Tanya who is everything Dr. Ruth Galloway isn’t — young, fit, eager, callow — and she might be having a wee crush on her boss, DCI Harry Nelson, who also happens to be the object of Ruth Galloway’s (unrequited) affection. This series does have angst. Of course, Ruth Galloway doesn’t see her as a threat, and DCI Nelson is too obtuse to recognize Tanya as flirting.

“Sir?”

Tanya’s head appears around his office door. He tries to discourage the rest of her from joining it.

“What is it?”

“I’ve found Annabelle Spens’ dental records.”

This is different. His tiredness vanishes and he rearranges his face into something more welcoming.

“Good work, Tanya. Show me.”

Praise makes Tanya expansive. “Well, it was really you saying about there being some fancy dental work done. I thought, maybe they didn’t get it done locally. So I contacted the London School of Dentistry. They’ve been around since 1911, used to be at the London Hospital but it’s now part of St. Bartholomew’s. Anyway, they had her records. They faxed them over a few minutes ago.”

— The Janus Stone, pp. 259 – 260

The Janus Stone: While on a Romantic Date, Ruth . . .

BIG SPOILER ALERT!!! SELF IS WARNING YOU!!! IF YOU THINK SHE IS KIDDING, SHE’S NOT!!!

Ruth’s date for the evening is a fellow archaeologist named Max. For a woman who weighs 14 stone (at least), Ruth Galloway does get around.

Now, Max has invited Ruth onto his boat. It’s a very cozy space, with a bed and a loo and everything.

“Do you have a boyfriend now?”

“No.” Ruth knows that now is the time to tell Max that while she doesn’t have a boyfriend, she does have another, rather permanent, commitment. She hesitates, trying to find the words.

“Ruth,” Max reaches out to touch her hand.

“I’m pregnant,” Ruth blurts out.

“What?” Max sits back. It is dark now and Ruth can’t see the expression on his face.

— The Janus Stone, p. 149

Self liked the first book in the series, The Crossing Places, but The Janus Stone is even better.

Stay tuned.

The Janus Stone: Clough

It’s funny how, in a mystery, self always gets more interested in the minor characters. Here she is, on her second Ruth Galloway mystery, going at a good clip (in between writing), and she lands on this conversation between Clough and his boss, Harry Nelson.

This is a very, very good conversation. Until now, she hasn’t paid much attention to Clough. She hopes he’s in the next book, and the next (This series is up to 15 books already, and she’s just discovered it). The mystery goes over well-tread ground (Catholic nuns and priests as suspects in child murders) but it’s the interaction between these two — Harry Nelson and Clough — that makes all the difference.

“That’s what the nun said. It was in Judy’s report. She said Hennessy believed the boy needed ‘love and attention.’ “

Nelson is rather impressed that Clough has remembered this. But then again, it’s a sad world if no one is allowed to love children.

“Maybe he did love them,” he suggests, “in a non-sexual, fatherly way.”

“Jesus,” scoffs Clough, “you’re sounding like a right God-squadder.”

“Rubbish,” says Nelson angrily, pulling out onto the motorway with the minimum of care. “I’m just not jumping to conclusions. Never assume, that’s what my first boss used to say.”

“I know. It makes an ass out of you and me.” Clough looks out of the window. Nelson wonders if he’s getting a bit above himself. A good spell in the archives tomorrow will take him down a peg or two.

“Tomorrow,” he says coldly, “you can start the search for the kids’ family. And look up the Land Registry for the house. I want a list of everyone who’s owned the site.”

“Jesus,” mutters Clough, in a distinctly non-religious tone.

— The Janus Stone, pp. 142 – 143