The unmissable new book in the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries. Ruth and Nelson are working on a murder case in which Cathbad emerges as the prime suspect. Can they uncover the truth in time to save their friend?

'GALLOWAY NOW SEEMS AS REAL AS MARPLE AND MORSE' The Times

'SET IN DIVINE NORTH NORFOLK. INTENSELY ATMOSPHERIC AND GREAT' India Knight

When builders renovating a café in King's Lynn find a human skeleton behind a wall, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway, Head of Archaeology at the nearby University of North Norfolk. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with Nelson. However, she agrees to look at the case.

Ruth sees at once that the bones are modern. They are identified as the remains of Emily Pickering, a young archaeology student who went missing in the 1990s. Emily attended a course run by her Cambridge tutor. Suspicion falls on him and also on another course member - Ruth's friend Cathbad, who is still frail following his near death from Covid.

As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the student group and the adults leading them. What was the link between the group and the King's Lynn café where Emily's bones were found?

Then, just when the team seem to be making progress, Cathbad disappears. Was it guilt that led him to flee?

The trail leads Ruth and Nelson to the Neolithic flint mines in Grimes Graves which are as spooky as their name. The race is on, first to find Cathbad and then to exonerate him, but will Ruth and Nelson uncover the truth in time to save their friend?

**THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown?

'GALLOWAY NOW SEEMS AS REAL AS MARPLE AND MORSE' The Times

'INTENSELY ATMOSPHERIC AND GREAT' India Knight

Forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth is in London clearing out her mother's belongings when she makes a surprising discovery: a photograph of her Norfolk cottage taken before Ruth lived there. Her mother always hated the cottage, so why does she have a picture of the place? The only clue is written on the back of the photo: Dawn, 1963.

Ruth returns to Norfolk determined to solve the mystery, but then Covid rears its ugly head. Ruth and her daughter are locked down in their cottage, attempting to continue with work and home-schooling. Happily, the house next door is rented by a nice woman called Zoe, who they become friendly with while standing on their doorsteps clapping for carers.

Nelson, meanwhile, is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links the deaths to an archaeological discovery, he breaks curfew to visit the cottage where he finds Ruth chatting to her neighbour whom he remembers as a carer who was once tried for murdering her employer.

Only then her name wasn't Zoe. It was Dawn.

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PRAISE FOR THE LOCKED ROOM

'Intelligent and gripping' Daily Express

'A terrific story' The Times

'This is Griffiths on top form' Mail on Sunday

'Charming from start to finish' Irish Independent


A Sunday Times bestseller w/c 07/02/2022

'SET IN DIVINE NORTH NORFOLK. INTENSELY ATMOSPHERIC AND GREAT' India Knight

Dr Ruth Galloway returns to the moody and beautiful landscape of North Norfolk to confront another killer. A devastating new case for our favourite forensic archaeologist in this acclaimed and bestselling crime series.

The Night Hawks, a group of metal detectorists, are searching for buried treasure when they find a body on the beach in North Norfolk. At first Nelson thinks that the dead man might be an asylum seeker but he turns out to be a local boy, Jem Taylor, recently released from prison. Ruth is more interested in the treasure, a hoard of Bronze Age weapons. Nelson at first thinks that Taylor's death is accidental drowning, but a second death suggests murder.

Nelson is called to an apparent murder-suicide of a couple at the isolated Black Dog Farm. Local legend talks of the Black Shuck, a spectral hound that appears to people before they die. Nelson ignores this, even when the owner's suicide note includes the line, 'He's buried in the garden.' Ruth excavates and finds the body of a giant dog.

All roads lead back to this farm in the middle of nowhere, but the place spells serious danger for anyone who goes near. Ruth doesn't scare easily. Not until she finds herself at Black Dog Farm ...

Magic, murder and a mystery rooted in a murky wartime past. Meet DI Stephens and Max Mephisto

Brighton, 1950.

When the body of a girl is found, cut into three, Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is reminded of a magic trick, the Zig Zag Girl.

The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old friend of Edgar's. They served together in the war as part of a shadowy unit called the Magic Men.

Max is still on the circuit, touring seaside towns in the company of ventriloquists, sword-swallowers and dancing girls. Changing times mean that variety is not what it once was, yet Max is reluctant to leave this world to help Edgar investigate. But when the dead girl turns out to be known to him, Max changes his mind.

Another death, another magic trick: Edgar and Max become convinced that the answer to the murders lies in their army days. When Edgar receives a letter warning of another 'trick', the Wolf Trap, he knows that they are all in the killer's sights...

Historical crimes involving a Victorian child killer may hold the key to several contemporary deaths in this macabre outing for Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist.

'Told with a deepening sense of the unease, seasoned with a touch of the occult' Daily Mail

Ruth has excavated a body from the grounds of Norwich Castle, which was once a prison. The body may be that of Victorian murderess Jemima Green. Called Mother Hook for her claw-like hand, Jemima was hanged for the murder of five children.

DCI Harry Nelson has no time for long-ago killers. Investigating the case of three infants found dead, one after the other, in their King's Lynn home, he's convinced that their mother is responsible.

Then a child goes missing. Could the abduction be linked to the long-dead Mother Hook? Ruth is pulled into the case, and back towards Nelson.

'ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CURRENT CRIME SERIES' Val McDermid
'A FIVE-STAR THRILLER' Daily Express
'GOOD WRITING AND CLEVER CHARACTERISATION' Red Magazine

Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich's web of underground tunnels. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder inquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity - now it suggests a much more sinister purpose.

Meanwhile, DS Judy Johnson is investigating the disappearance of a local rough sleeper. The only trace of her is the rumour that she's gone 'underground'. This might be a figure of speech, but with the discovery of the bones and the rumours both Ruth and the police have heard that the network of old chalk-mining tunnels under Norwich is home to a vast community of rough sleepers, the clues point in only one direction. Local academic Martin Kellerman knows all about the tunnels and their history - but can his assertions of cannibalism and ritual killing possibly be true?

As the weather gets hotter, tensions rise. A local woman goes missing and the police are under attack. Ruth and Nelson must unravel the dark secrets of The Underground and discover just what gruesome secrets lurk at its heart - before it claims another victim.

A gruesome discovery at an old children's home lays bare terrible secret's from Norwich's past in the second gripping mystery for Dr Ruth Galloway.

'The setting is enticingly atmospheric . . . a really intelligent murder story' Independent

Dr Ruth Galloway's forensic skills are called upon when builders, demolishing an old house in Norwich, uncover the bones of a child - minus the skull - beneath a doorway. Is it some ritual sacrifice or just plain straightforward murder? Ruth links up with DCI Harry Nelson to investigate.

The house was once a children's home. Nelson traces the Catholic priest who used to run the place. He tells him that two children did go missing forty years before - a boy and a girl. They were never found.

When carbon dating proves that the child's bones predate the home and relate to a time when the house was privately owned, Ruth is drawn ever more deeply into the case. But as spring turns into summer it becomes clear that someone is desperate to put her off the scent by frightening her to death...

A gripping Brighton-based mystery from the bestselling author of the Dr Ruth Galloway series - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie, cosy crime and TV series such as Grantchester and Midsomer Murders.

'Griffiths writes with a smart, sharp eye' Peter James
'Recalls the best of Agatha Christie' Sunday Express

Three young women have gone missing.

A girl called Rhonda has vanished from her boarding school. Maybe she ran away, but there are disturbing similarities to the disappearance of two other young women - those too thought not to be suspicious.

But where are they?

Detective Edgar Stephens is under pressure to solve Rhonda's disappearance, but it is his wife Emma, herself a former detective now frustrated at being just a housewife, who concludes there might be a connection between the three cases.

Then the danger comes nearer home.

Edgar's friend, magician Max Mephisto, is reinventing himself as a movie star and trying not to envy his daughter Ruby's television fame. Little do either of them know how close they are to being drawn into the deadly web of abduction and murder about to trap them all.

'A piquant mixture of humour, period detail . . . and truly beguiling characterisation' Financial Times