I did have a debate with myself about whether this should be a Series I Love or a mystery series or a bingable series post, but given that I read all fifteen books in the series in less than six weeks and kept going out to get more of them so I could find out what happened next it has to count as a series I loved surely.
Ok so first book in the series, The Crossing Places was a BotW at the end of February, but I’ll recap you the set up any way. Dr Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist who teaches at the (fictional) University of North Norfolk. At the start of the series she is in her late 30s, single and living in a cottage in a pretty bleak area of the Norfolk coast that she fell in love with while working on a dig some years before. She’s fiercely independent and the isolation of her house mirrors the life that she has created for herself. In The Crossing Places she is called by the local police when the bones of a child are found on a beach. This is how she meets Detective Inspector Harry Nelson, originally from Blackpool but who moved to Norfolk to run the Serious Crimes Unit. Ruth becomes the North Norfolk force’s resident forensic archaeologist, which means their paths keep crossing every time historic remains are found and and through the cases Ruth’s life starts to change and expand in all sorts of ways, personal and professional. There are fifteen books in the series, which cover about the same period of time – starting in around 2008 and taking us right through the pandemic – which is quite the experience to revisit in a book!
This has got a lot of things that I love in crime books as well as a good mystery to solve – namely a great cast of supporting characters that form a sort of found family, lots of links and call backs to previous books in the series which reward reading in order and a romantic thread with a strong will-they/won’t-they vibe. Now I know I review a lot of romance books and so some of you reading this are going to be romance readers (as well as crime readers) so please follow this * to the bottom of the post for a spoiler-y point that may be a deal breaker for some of you.
As I’ve said, I binged my way through all of these in about six weeks to the detriment of my other reading plans – and it would have been quicker if I could have got hold of some of the books faster. And yes, it gave me a massive book hangover when they were over because I’d grown so attached to the characters and enjoyed being part of their lives. However, I’m glad that I came to them when the series was already complete because it meant I could just gobble them up and not have to wait a year to find out what happened next – and there are a couple of these that end of cliff hangers which would have driven me mad!
I’d read four of the seven books in Elly Griffiths’s Brighton Mysteries before I came to these – and as I said in the BotW for Crossing Places, I think I had been avoiding these because the covers looked like they would be too dark for me. But they’re no darker than the Brighton ones (which I started because I spotted the first one on NetGalley back in the day) and although they’re darker than most of the American cozy crimes I read, they’re not dark-dark. They’re probably somewhere around the Hawthorne and Horowitz and Thursday Murder Club point in the scale, if such a scale existed.
These are really easy to get hold of – I bought several of these from various Waterstones and Foyles around central London when I finished the one I was reading while I was staying in London. Do read them in order if you can because as I said there are lots of links between them. And of course they’re on Kindle and Kobo too – including omnibus editions of some of them if you want to save some cash on buying them individually.
Have a great weekend!
*As you’ve probably guessed Nelson is the love interest here – but he’s also married and if cheating/infidelity is a deal breaker for you in your reading you will not like this series, do not read, do not pass go, do not collect £200 etc.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Great series review. I love this series and although I was sad when it ended, I was also glad that it didn’t just keep going with the books possibly deteriorating in quality. And there was a little hint that we might see Ruth and Nelson at some point in the future😀
I thought she did a really good job of finding a nice way to bring the series to a satisfying conclusion that didn’t compromise on anything we knew about the characters. And if they pop up again in the other series it would be lovely to see them. And of course there are only so many archaeological mysteries that might pop up – and years that he can dodge retirement!
If you contrast it to something like Steph Plum that is now 30+ books in with the love triangle still going – or at least I think it’s still going = I gave up in the high 20s because the quality had gone down and there was never any character development. Also she added magic into the main series whereas she had always kept it very separate before. But the first fifteen to twenty of those were really good – but there was no way of wrapping that up without fans being unhappy about her picking Morelli over Ranger or vice versa. And Griffiths did well to dodge that with these.
Have you read all her other books?
I think the most recent Brighton mysteries are even better.
There are also 4 books in the “Harbinder Kaur” series, set in Sussex and London – I put her name in inverted commas because actually they vary in how much they feature her, and some of the books have other characters who seem to be equally/more important.
Then there’s the Justice Jones books about a girl at boarding school, set in the 1930s – written for younger readers but the first was still fun for me (others are TBR)
There’s a collection of short stories featuring many of her series characters (including Ruth’s cat), and even bringing together figures from more than one series.
I enjoyed The Frozen People and am looking forward to future instalments in all Elly Griffiths’ other series
Also 4 novels first written under Elly Griffiths’ real name Domenica da Rosa, before she turned to crime – I’ve definitely read one and possibly a second.
I’m actually about halfway through the Brighton mysteries – I read the first one and the second one as they came out and then for some reason managed to forget about them until my mum read Zigzag Girl at book group at which point I came back around to them. But the first Ruth was on offer at the same time so I picked that up and then because the series was finished I was able to do the massive binge… They also seem to be in the bookshops more than the Brighton ones are – I got the second one from Carlisle Waterstones when we were up there and then I was able to pick up the next ones I needed around the central London Waterstoneses and Big Foyles when I finished one while I was staying down there. Next on the list is finishing the Brighton ones (especially as we were just in Brighton!) and then i think I have the first Harbinder Kaur and I definitely have the Frozen People…
I really like the Harbinder series. She’s definitely growing on me as a character