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Book Review: The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths (Ruth Galloway #1)

The Crossing PlacesThe Crossing Places is the first in the Ruth Galloway series written by author Elly Griffiths. The story is about Ruth, a forensic anthropologist who lives a nice quiet life in Norfolk.

When some bones belonging to a child are discovered on a nearby beach, Ruth is asked to come in and help date them. The bones turn out to be around 2000 years old.

The detective on the case, DCI Harry Nelson is rather disappointed with the skeleton’s age as he was hoping to identify the remains of a girl gone missing about 10 years ago.

However soon another girl goes missing, so the investigator is left with trying to link the one case to another.

The plot is fun and I actually enjoyed reading the book. Granted it’s not my usual style of “sitting at the edge of your seat” novel and I noticed a few things that I couldn’t care much about in the book, but overall it was a great read, especially if you like archaeological style mysteries.

Some of my small gripes with the book were the fact that it was written in third person present tense, and the writing could have been a notch classier. I felt that the author didn’t really care much about how she placed her words on the paper. In terms of a work of literature, it was quite mediocre.

Despite these shortcomings, I found myself getting engrossed in the book and I knew that I would pick up the second one in the series soon.

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28 Comments

  1. Sometimes the story is enough to make me forget about the style of writing because its a great story, and then there are those times where the style of writing makes it impossible for me to go on. I dont know which wouldve been the case with this read. Thanks for the review.

  2. This sounds like an interesting book, though the “third person present tense” would probably get old to me. But I still feel intrigued to read it!

  3. Sounds like a great book. Call me old school, but I’d rather have a book like this, than the digital version.

  4. This sounds like a pretty good book! I love how you’re honest about the author’s writing!

  5. I love crime books and shows. I always used to read the Patricia Cornwall books.
    I am going to look this book up – thanks for sharing!

  6. Sounds like the type of book that I would enjoy. The cover looks very icy and chilling, eek! Great review and looking forward to more from you.

  7. I would love to read these.. sounds like one of my favorite shows on T.V. Bones…

  8. Reminds me of the show “Bones”. Shame that it wasn’t quite up to standard though… an interesting plot damaged by lazy writing!

  9. It seems as if a book from the perspective of a forensic anthropologist will be an interesting one. I usually read mysteries from the point of view of lawyers so this would be quite a departure.

  10. This sounds great. My daughter is just starting to get into reading mysteries as I did as a child (Nancy Drew, etc.) Always a good adventure!

  11. My dad is an avid mystery reader. I’m going to pass this along to him. I love to read, but have a toddler underfoot so I don’t get much time to myself these days.

    Erica
    We Three Crabs

  12. I’m not a fan of mysteries, but I love to read about archaeology, so maybe I’ll give it a try. Thanks for a great review!

  13. Hi! I love a good mystery. Thanks for this review and I’ll be sharing the link via Pinterest.

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