The Crossing Places

After finishing Uni, one of my greatest delights was being able to read non-study related books guilt free. At Uni whenever I started a fun book I always had a niggling voice at the back of my mind telling me that I should be working or reading something worthier. In my first post-Uni job at Waterstone's, the Stieg Larsson novels were absolutely everywhere so I thought I should give them a try. I had never been a huge fan of crime fiction (although I do remember reading a Point Crime book at school) so my expectations were low. Maybe being released from my pop-fiction exile had a lot to do with it, but I enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo greatly. Since then I've started reading a lot more crime novels and have even set up a crime reading group in Norwich (crimefictionnorwich@gmail.com) 

All of this is a rather tortuous (and perhaps irrelevant) set up to a review of Elly Griffiths' The Crossing Places. I had first heard of Elly Griffiths at work as all of her Ruth Galloway novels have been set in Norfolk. She had also visited the library recently for an event which went exceptionally well by all accounts. So, with the same sense of release that I found when reading the Stieg Larsson books and with every crime novel since, I looked forward to starting The Crossing Places. 

I wasn't disappointed either. By the end of the first chapter I had fallen in love with Griffiths' heroine Ruth Galloway. It is incredibly refreshing to have a lead character in a crime novel who is, well, normal. I will leave it to my friends to draw comparisons between myself and Ruth Galloway, so lets just say that I can relate to her rather a lot. Which is for the best really as the plot of the novel is a combination of fairly standard whodunit with lashings of pagan paraphernalia. It is the character of Ruth that keeps you interested throughout with her normal-ness keeping the plot rooted to some form of reality. I must say though that Griffiths' writing style is as down to earth as her lead character which makes the book a delight to read.

I look forward to reading Elly Griffiths' other novels to see how the character of Ruth evolves. I just hope that everything stays normal on the Western front (of Norfolk).