Elly Griffiths The House at Sea's End (2011)
‘Did you husband ever discuss with you what you’d do if the invasion actually happened?’ ‘Oh yes,’ says Irene. ‘My job was to shoot the children and shoot myself. Buster didn’t want us taken prisoner, you see.’
Another enjoyable outing for Elly Griffith's forensic archaeologist and amateur detective Dr. Ruth Galloway. And another outing in the present tense. How does she keep it up?!
I thought that this third episode was stronger in plotting and more interesting in setting than the second {REVIEW}. The story revolves about the question of an abortive German invasion of the Norfolk coast in the Second World War. A group of bodies are found in an isolated cave on the cliffs of Norfolk: are they the remains of a German invasion force? What were the Dad's Army blokes up to in the area? Is it coincidence that the remaining members of the troop have all recently died?
The strand of underlying story - Ruth and her policeman/occasional lover, their newborn child and the woes of single motherhood - doesn't interfere too much with an old-style murder investigation with a relentlessly present tense (and somewhat confusing) finale and satisfactory tying up of loose ends. One strand of the story - Ruth's visiting vengeance-fueled friend from Bosnia - seemed, to me, to not sit altogether comfortably (the message about what people are capable of in wartime did not require so heavy a hand; but perhaps it is scene-setting for a later Galloway book?).
Griffiths has a neat hand with low-key morgue humour:
‘We’ve started on the trench.’ Ruth appears next to him. ‘It’s difficult because there’s not much space to dig.’ There is already a neat trench in the narrow gap between the tall cliffs. Nelson looks at it with pleasure. Annoying though archaeologists can be he admires their way with a trench. His scene-of-crime boys could never get the edges that straight.
Rating: 7/10.
If you liked this... I think about Ellis Peter's 'Felse' series when I read Elly Griffiths.
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