2023/059: The Last Remains — Elly Griffiths

2023/059: The Last Remains — Elly Griffiths

This is where, twenty-four years earlier, a timber circle had emerged from the sea, a great archaeological discovery, certainly, but also an event that, in Cathbad’s opinion, created a disturbance in the ether, a cosmic jolt that is still causing repercussions in the lives of the people involved. ‘Things are still slightly out of balance,’ he said recently. ‘Ruth and Nelson. That only happened because of the energies from the dig.’ [p. 250]

The fifteenth (and, as it turns out, the last 'for now') Ruth Galloway novel: Ruth is an archaeologist and head of the archaeology department at the fictional University of North Norfolk. Her on-off love interest, Harry Nelson, is a Detective Chief Inspector. Their daughter Kate is now at secondary school. Ruth's friends include Cathbad the druid, Ruth's recently-discovered half-sister Zoe, and various police officers and academics, past and present. The setting is more or less contemporary (Cathbad is suffering from Long Covid, the first time I've seen it used as a plot device) and mostly East Anglia, with a focus on the neolithic flint mines known as Grimes Graves.( Read more... )