I am a big fan of Elly Griffiths Ruth Galloway mystery series and this one did not disappoint. The pandemic is starting to rear its ugly head in Ruth's town and some people are more worried than others and while some are stocking up on supplies others are blowing it off. The remains of a body is found and Ruth's archeological class she teaches is just starting to to do hands-on work with this body when everything shuts down in March 2020. I realize that there are people that do not want to read books that take place during the pandemic because it was bad enough in the real world but I thought Elly Griffiths did an excellent job portraying people's thoughts and fears in those first few months when the world shut down. Her writing did a phenomenal job bringing all the uncertainty, fears, behaviors, that I thought that only I had experienced, but her writing made me realize we were all feeling the same way. The wry humor portrayed by Ruth especially when it came to seeing what her government was telling their people, and the speed at which schools and universities had to flip their teaching to online instruction and how it affected her was interesting to read and although not funny, it did affirm what we were all dealing with during those first few months.

This story also showed how classes/projects were left in limbo when everything shut down so there was no investigating of the body that was found but there is a murder investigation headed by DCI Nelson that needs to be solved quickly and it's all the more difficult to find the murderer when everybody is in lockdown, Ruth discovers unsettling news about her family and she and Nelson continue to figure out their relationship.
The pandemic is the backdrop to this story, but it is the love, care and support the main characters have for each other that truly makes this book shine. I loved this book!

I am a big fan of this series, and always look forward to the next book to see what adventures Ruth, Cathbad, Nelson and the team will get involved in. I love the characters and how their personal stories progress throughout the series. Some big things happening in this book! And always a mystery and some bones….

In Griffiths' latest Ruth Galloway outing, the author uses her own journal entries from early 2020 to create a realistic picture of investigating a crime at the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. Harry Nelson's team is doing a routine investigation of a middle-aged woman's suicide when they learn that the woman's bedroom was locked from the outside. With it now starting to look like murder, the team starts to look into other crimes with similar features. Then the lockdown begins. With social distancing and taking turns working from home, the team is disjointed; following up on potential witnesses and leads proves frustratingly slow as everyone's usual routines are upended. The suspense builds to a dramatic climax.

One of the things I like best about this series is that the characters grow and change. In addition to a cracking good mystery, it's a pleasure to check in with old friends and see how they are doing.

Highly recommended for readers who enjoy character-driven cozies.

This is a well-written and executed drama that had me immersed in all aspects from beginning to end. Lockdown means not seeing anyone, yet Ruth gets involved in another mystery involving deaths that may be connected to her new neighbor. The author tells a story full of suspense and intrigued that I could not put this book down. There were a few tense moments that I hoped would not be what it looked like it would be. Does the author deliver a knock-out tale that will have you drawn into Ruth’s circle? Yes, she does and I’m it gets even better. The ending – I can’t wait for the next book in the series. As with other books in the series, this latest is the best one yet.

This is the fourteenth installment in the excellent Ruth Galloway series. As usual, Ruth is involved in helping solve a crime. This time it's a bit different, and Griffiths brilliantly brings in the Covid-19 lockdown and the various familiar characters reactions to it. The actual mystery is riveting and seamlessly integrated into the lockdown situation. The regular characters continue to grow and become more complex. I'm eager for the next installment. This book is highly recommended.

Of all the mystery series I follow, the Ruth Galloway series is one of my absolute favorites. I just adore Ruth. When the pandemic hits and Ruth is writing out her grocery list, the first two items are cat food and wine. Substitute dog for cat, and it would have mirrored my own. Priorities, right?
The Locked Room finds Ruth investigating an old skeleton found in the Tombland area of Norwich. Definitely old, probably medieval. Everyone keeps asking if it was a plague death, since it appears to be outside the borders of the church graveyard. She’s also recently cleaned out her mother’s things and found an old photo of Ruth’s cottage, taken before Ruth was even born. Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating the supposed suicide of a widow in her 60s.
Griffiths did a fabulous job of taking me right back to the start of the pandemic and how strange it all was. She perfectly gets the sensations of that time - the frustration, the worry. Nelson, especially, is bristling under the new rules. And when one of the gang contracts Covid, the tension really ratchets up.
The story comes together neatly with a very satisfying ending. Not to mention, a cliffhanger involving a personal relationship.
The problem with finishing the latest in this series is knowing I’ll have to wait another year to be in their company again.
My thanks to Netgalley and Mariner Books for an advance copy of this book.

I have devoured every word of the Ruth Galloway series, and each time I pick one up, I am reminded again what wonderful, pure reads these books are. From the second you crack open the first page to the moment you close the cover at the end, Griffiths as a storyteller holds her reader completely in her grasp. Under her spell. Bewitched. This book is no different, though it was, to me a bit more intense and a bit more grim as she confronts Covid front and center.

It is historically significant to have lived through a pandemic – and we seem to be emerging from it at last – but as you live through something historically significant, you have no actual perspective. A start to gaining some perspective is to read a thoughtful examination of just what happened, which Griffiths provides her reader. As the book opens, Ruth is teaching an archeology class and she gets a call that there’s body on a construction site. She takes the class along as a learning experience, event letting the students bag up the bones for transportation at the end. The students are curious if the body comes from a plague pit, a foreshadowing of what’s to come.

Meanwhile, Harry Nelson and his team are looking into the mysterious suicide of an apparently happy woman inside of a locked room in her own home. It makes perfect sense but it makes no sense at all, and Judy especially cannot let this one go. When several other similar deaths seem to form a pattern, Nelson and his team are on it.

Ruth is welcoming a new neighbor, and Harry is alone at home as his wife and young son are off visiting his mother-in-law. Ruth is also sorting through her mother’s things as her father’s new wife wants to do some redecorating, and she discovers an old photo of the house she now lives in – a photo taken before she was born. These are many threads to weave together, but Griffiths manages to do so effortlessly.

And the real guest of honor in this book is covid, as the events start off in February of 2020. As covid begins to take hold and lockdowns begin to roll out – the awkwardness of wearing masks, the loneliness of staying apart, the weirdness of zoom, the lack of cars on the road and the need to socially distance when you are in the same room – all of these things come rushing back as Griffiths brings them again to vivid life. I found it somewhat painful to read about.

However, Griffiths does not write books as sociology experiments, and this one is no different. There is a covid death early on, and then one of the central series characters comes down with a very bad case of it, requiring hospitalization and a ventilator. In this way Griffiths draws the reader even further in emotionally.

I was recently at a conference where I interviewed author Ellen Hart, who talked about the “hook and pull” of narrative. One chapter gives you a hook, the next one pulls you through it. Hart is an expert at this technique, and so too is Elly Griffiths. She supplies a hook, she whisks you to another story thread to pull you through, and then in the next chapter comes up with another hook. It’s very hard to stop reading a book like this. Technique and a bit of narrative magic are both at work.

I don’t think I’ve cried so much at the end of any book (maybe Charlotte’s Web) as I did at the end of this one. While this was an intense and dark retelling of recent events, it’s an ultimately redemptive and hopeful one. This is another spectacular read from the talented Griffiths.

A series of apparent suicides, an old picture of a cottage, a weight loss group, a professor of archeology, and a skeleton uncovered in a place called Tombland are just some of the many aspects of this novel that keep the reader wanting to know more. All of this and the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown make this a timely read. This is #14 in the Ruth Galloway Mystery series. Though there are many characters, which is confusing in the beginning since I had never read any of the previous titles, the author does a good job of providing just the right amount of background information to move the story quickly. This is a satisfying read with lots of twisty threads smoothly tied up in the end.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this advance copy to read and review.

While I adore these characters and feel like I know them, I also feel like they are stuck in a rut and on repeat. Let’s get back to the archaeology please.

It's February, 2020, and there's a novel virus raging through the world. In Norfolk, in addition to dealing with the strain on the healthcare system and loss of life, a handful of women are dying by suicide. Detective Harry Nelson suspects foul play in one instance and sets the team to work investigate. Meanwhile, Ruth gains a new neighbor in the remote salt marsh she calls home. Fans of the series will enjoy this solid entry.

Always glad when a new book comes out in this series. There was a lot going on and Covid was a part of the story. Can't wait for the next one. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

In this latest installment in Griffith's Ruth Galloway series, a new neighbor moves in next door to Galloway, while Nelson and his team investigate a string of suicides that may be murders. Right as the action gears up, England goes into lockdown as a result of the COVID pandemic.

I've held off on reading pandemic-related fiction generally, not wanting to read about the issues such as those brought up in Louise Penny's Madness of Crowds, but this book integrates the pandemic in a way that is both familiar and terrible for it being familiar to most of us. The book focuses on the mystery and the characters involved while illustrating their struggles to adjust to masking, social distancing, quarantining, and the myriad other responses to the coronavirus. There is less archaeology than in the series' other books, but considering the inclusion of a more personal storyline it doesn't suffer for it. The book also ends with a cliffhanger that makes me look forward to the next title in the series even more. Highly recommended for mystery lovers.

The latest in the Ruth Galloway series, which never disappoints. In addition to the mystery at the heart of the story, Ms. Griffiths captures the feelings of uncertainty, confusion, and disbelief at the very beginning of the pandemic.

Locked Room by Eli Griffiths is the latest Ruth Galloway novel.
This story is timely as it takes place during the coronavirus in Great Britain. Ruth is confronted with quarantine living, teaching and mothering.
It was interesting reading this exactly two years after the start of COVID-19 and seeing what had changed and what was the same. I enjoyed seeing how Ruth and other integral characters handled the pandemic and how the police were able to continue investigating a string of suicides/possible homicides while social distancing. The quarantining also provided more leeway for relationships that could be difficult otherwise.
Once again, Elly Griffiths does not disappoint in the Locked Room.
#netgalley

We're 14 books in to the Ruth Galloway series, but these books still stay fresh and thrilling. In The Locked Room, the reader finds out how our favorite character weather the COVID-19 pandemic. We see some adapt easily and others are struggling (such as Nelson to no surprise). This marks the first book that I've read that is set during the pandemic, and I'm sure there will be many others!

Readers know from the opening paragraph of The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths that Covid-19 will have a role in this tale. The read begins in late February of 2020 and Ruth is in her mom’s house going through her things. Ruth’s father, Arthur, is away with his new wife, Gloria, who would have like to redecorate a bit when they get back. It isn’t as harsh as it sounds as many months have passed since Jean died and Gloria and Arthur later married. Gloria has been very good about everything, but it is time to move forward.

It is as she goes through a shoebox of pictures that have been labeled “private” that Ruth has found a picture of her cottage. Several other pictures were strange and confusing, but this one stopped her dead. While it is her cottage, a place Jean always disliked and made her feelings very known, the cottage looks a bit different and not just because of the age of the photograph. On the back of the picture “Dawn 1963” is written in her mom’s handwriting. Ruth was born in 1968. The picture also means Mom was at her cottage thirty years before Ruth ever saw the place, let alone bought it.

That mystery of what her mother was doing won’t go away when she returns home to her cottage. She begins researching the history of her house as well as the houses of the neighbors. Somebody may know why her Mom was at the cottage. A place that she always acted like she had never seen before Ruth bought it.

Nelson also has a couple of his own mysteries to solve. One is his future as he remains married to Michelle, who now knows everything thanks to recent events. Things Michelle has gone off with their youngest child, George, back home to Blackpool on holiday. Nelson and their dog, Bruno, have been left to fend for themselves.

That means working even more for Nelson as he has very few outside interest besides his job. Fortunately for him, a current case is bothering him. Samantha Wilson was found dead in her home, lying on her bead, and with an empty pill bottle. Everything in the bedroom looks like a suicide and there is not a real reason to question it. Except for the cooked Weight Watcher’s meal sitting in the microwave. Who puts a meal in and starts cooking it before going to bed to die by suicide?

As various characters go about their lives, the news of covid is just beginning. For example, Judy and Cathbad are preparing with supplies and Cathbad has already figured out there with be a shortage of toilet paper. Ruth isn’t paying a lot attention as she has students to teach and a department to run and seems to expect an occasional minor inconvenience if anything. Which is rather surprising when the reader thinks about it given her knowledge of history and archeology and her awareness of a “plague pit” in the local area. Then there is Nelson who is lonely and annoyed by the boss a bit more than normal as she is going on about using hand sanitizer and seems to be taking a ghoulish pleasure in everything.

What follows is a complicated read where mysteries of all types, personal and professional, take a back seat to Covid-19 and its disruptive effects as the weeks pass and it comes far too close to home affecting everyone greatly. At the same time, Ruth copes with missing and possibly endangered students and Nelson deals with several cases that may or may not be suicides. Not to mention the relationship he has with Ruth.

There is a lot going on in The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths. The Covid-19 aspect is a major character that dwarfs everything else in this complicated read. At times, that aspect made the book tough going for this reader. At the same time, the author handled it well throughout the very complicated read. The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths is an entertaining story and one that is strongly recommended.


My read came via an ARC and NetGalley. Per the publisher, reviewers were asked to hold reviews until publication day.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2022

This author was new to me. I had no idea there was a series of books about Dr. Galloway. I truly enjoyed the mystery of the Locked Room. There were many ways the story could have gone, and the author had me guessing until the very end.

Griffiths latest Ruth Galloway mystery takes on a series of locked room murders and the Covid shutdown in a tense, claustrophobic thriller. Griffiths does a great job incorporating archaeological mysteries and techniques into her books, and the Norfolk setting is moody and atmospheric.

This was my first Elly Griffiths book in the Ruth Galloway series. If you have not read any other books in this series, I would not recommend starting with the Locked Room. I found it hard to keep characters straight for a fist time reading. Having said this, I do intend to start at the first book in the series . I believe this will help in the confusion of characters.

I enjoyed this installment of the Ruth Galloway series. This is only the second book I have read about Ruth, a professor of archaeology, her close friend Nelson, a detective, and all of their friends, colleagues, and families. Covid is just beginning to sweep across the UK when Ruth is called upon to help unearth the skeleton of a possible medieval plague victim. At the same time, Nelson finds himself investigating the apparent suicide of an older woman who lived by herself. When the body of another woman is found dead inside a locked room, Nelson and his team wonder if a serial killer is at work while everyone around them is trying to survive living in lockdown.
The mystery in the book was well done and the pacing was great. The influences and themes of the medieval plague victims interspersed throughout the story tied into everyone's attempts to adjust to living with the threat of Covid in the present day. The author did a wonderful job of capturing those early days of the pandemic, when hand sanitizer, masks, social distancing, and zoom meetings were all so new and different. I also enjoyed the relationships between all the characters. This aspect of the book made it quite satisfying.
This is a slow-burn, cozy mystery, but it was hard to put down and I would recommend it to any mystery-lover. I can't wait to read other books in this series.