However, her quiet, orderly, slightly dull life is rudely upended when she is approached by Detective Chief Inspector Nelson to examine a child’s bones found on a beach. She is unmarried and lives with her two cats. Ruth is a forensic archaeologist in her late thirties. While this first book has some issues, I understand now why the series is so popular. I went in blind, however, not really knowing what the premise was, and I'm glad I did.

So many of my GR friends read the Ruth Galloway series, making me wildly curious about it for a long time. The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths is a 2010 publication. Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth’s remote home? Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter-exactly like the ones about Lucy. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Ruth for help, believing the bones to be the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor taunts him with bizarre letters referencing ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. But her routine is harshly upended when a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach. She lives happily alone with her cats in a remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants-not quite earth, not quite sea. An atmospheric adventure with beloved forensic archaeologist and “captivating amateur sleuth” Ruth Galloway, as she teams up with Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson to investigate a set of remains, thought to be the bones of a little girl who went missing ten years before-“an inspired creation” (Louise Penny).įorensic archeologist Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties.