Elly Griffiths is the author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series, as well as the standalone novels The Stranger Diaries, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, and The Postscript Murders. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brighton, England.

A Room Full of Bones is a pleasing read, perhaps tending more to the 'cosy' style of crime fiction than earlier instalments in the series, but is certainly exciting and with a more satisfying crime and detection element this time round as the plot is more clever and more robust." - Maxine Clarke, Euro Crime MY THOUGHTS: I love Ruth! She is intelligent, passionate about her work, and decidedly unglamorous. How refreshing to have a realistic and relatable main character. She mightn't have the most wonderful life skills - like most of us she is just stumbling through - but I love that too. She does things, mostly in her personal life, and I think 'Oh, Ruth!'; but then, I don't know if I would have done any different. Each mystery provides a complete plot line and an interesting archaeological angle, but it is very much the relationships that keep me engaged in this series. Will Ruth stay single? Will Harry's marriage survive his wife's discovery that he is Kate's father? Will Harry and Ruth find a way to communicate about their child that doesn't ruffle everyone further? There are even the other police officers, whose private lives are starting to form part of the fabric of each book. I do love Ruth and so many old and new characters are particularly interesting. Some people and events seemed so real to me I had urges to look them up. For example you can't be in a hospital with a person that just got well and out of ICU and talk about sexual tension or make a baby say "dada" to every male she meets.Rich in atmosphere and history and blessed by [Griffith's] continuing development of brilliant, feisty, independent Ruth...A Room Full of Bones, like its predecessors, works its magic on the reader's imagination." -- Richmond Times-Dispatch Forensic archaeologist, Dr Ruth Galloway finds a still-warm corpse lying beside some very ancient bones in this beguiling mystery. Like its predecessors, this is a wonderfully rich mixture of ancient and contemporary, superstition and rationality, with a cast of druids, dreamers and assorted tree-huggers as well as some thoroughly modern villains: a welcome addition to a great series' Guardian. * Guardian * Galloway is an everywoman, smart, successful and a little bit unsure of herself. Readers will look forward to learning more about her." -- USA Today EXCERPT: At the end of the gallery she steps from tile to carpet and, to her surprise, finds herself in a red-walled Victorian study. A stag's head looms over a painted fireplace and a man sits at a desk, frowning fiercely as he dips his quill into an inkwell.

In this book I was so worried about the mystical and magical re curses and such and was so glad that eventually a scientific explanation was provided as a possible probably probable explanation. I was also fine with the cause(s) being left open. Judy Johnson and Dave Clough, who loves the Godfather films and frequently intones 'I'm gonna make you an offer you can't refuse' when alone with a mirror, play larger roles in this book, and Cathbad continues to both intrigue and infuriate Nelson.

Books Multibuys

Nelson is a tough working-class northern guy, and blah blah blah. We get that too, we heard it all before (about three times in three other books, in fact) with exactly the same words you used in this book. If you can't find an original way to give information on your characters to potential new readers, maybe you should try something else, like, I don't know, writing something that ISN'T a series of books with the same characters? It is Halloween in King's Lynn, and forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway is attending a strange event at the local history museum - the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. Ruth is asked to be present at the opening of a coffin in the local museum, owned by the Smith family, so she can assess the contents. The coffin has been recently found, and is thought to contain the bones of a mediaeval bishop, Augustine. Ruth turns up at the appointed hour, only to discover the museum's curator lying prone by the coffin. Detective Inspector Harry Nelson is called in to investigate, realising that Ruth's involvement in this case is not going to make it easy for him to work on it. Griffiths' excellent series is well-informed and original, and its setting in one of the bleaker corners of East Anglia is vividly evoked' Literary Review. * Literary Review * A fast-paced, insightful and murky story of ordinary lives, buried secrets, and desperate crimes' Good Book Guide. * Good Book Guide *

I've read a stand-alone by this author and she did a decent job but this series of hers is just terrible and I can't believe her publisher continues with it! The dialogues and thoughts of the characters are repetitive, the characters are boring and selfish, the relationships between them shallow and the situations most of the time ridiculous!Lovers of well-written and intelligent traditional mysteries will welcome [Griffith’s] fourth book . . . A Room Full of Bones is a clever blend of history and mystery with more than enough forensic details to attract the more attentive reader.”— Denver Post This is the fourth book in the series. We revisit old characters and meet some new ones, and the complicated lives and relationships continue to unfold. Ruth’s old friend Dan Golding dies in a house fire. But before he died Dan wrote to Ruth telling her that he had made a ground-breaking archaeological discovery. Could this find be linked to his death and who are the sinister neo-Nazi group who were th … There is no way you get to PhD level without hearing about NAGPRA and the issue of repatriation of human remains belonging to Native American and Australian Aborigine tribes. It's a sensitive issue and a very interesting one, and I heard about it for the first time during the last year of my BA. Again lots of copying and pasting from wikipedia, lots of generalization, and nothing else. There are some really fine red herrings in this book, including some mixed-up identities, and I found that entertaining. The story is deftly told.