The Locked Room

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths,

Book 14 – Ruth Galloway series

Expected US publication:  June 28, 2022 – Mariner Books

Uncorrected review copy courtesy of the publisher

My take:

I don’t usually jump into a series with book 14 but I felt reassured by a few GR reviewers of The Locked Room that it wouldn’t be a problem. And, overall, it wasn’t. At times there seemed to be a lot of characters making me wish I’d bothered to keep a notebook nearby. But I didn’t so there were times I would have to pause and think about who a person was and their relationship to the MCs. All to say, that’s on me. Next time I’ll know better.

I enjoyed getting to know Ruth, Nelson and the various supporting characters. Ruth is an archeologist and college professor. Nelson is head of the Serious Crime Unit and currently in the middle of investigating murders and/or suicides. Ruth and Nelson have a past and are parents of eleven year old Kate. Nelson’s current wife has been caught in lock down at her mother’s home so she’s a bit out of the picture.

On top of everything, Covid 19 causes the country to lock down making things challenging for everyone (as we all know).

I thought author Elly Griffiths did a great job of portraying the strange first days of lock down. Now that we’re more than two years down the road it’s very interesting to read how Ruth, Nelson and the others handled things. They did their best and managed to solve the crime and a separate mystery pertaining to Ruth. I enjoyed it all and, given how things left off for Nelson, I can’t wait to read the next book in the series!

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Description:

Pandemic lockdowns have Ruth Galloway feeling isolated from everyone but a new neighbor—until Nelson comes calling, investigating a decades-long string of murder-suicides that’s looming ever closer.

Three years after her late mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of Jean’s Norfolk cottage with a peculiar inscription. Ruth returns to the cottage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of COVID-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance. But when Nelson breaks quarantine to rush to Ruth’s cottage and enlist her help in investigating a series of murder-suicides he has connected to an archeological discovery, he finds Zoe is hardly who she says she is. The further Nelson investigates these deaths, the closer they lead him to Ruth’s friendly neighbor—until Ruth, Zoe, and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it’s too late. (publisher)

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