The House at Sea's End

The dry humour and intelligence of Elly Griffith's Ruth Galloway mysteries, set in Norfolk, England, are fresh air in a genre dominated by surly male detectives and gun-totin' female PIs.

In the third novel in the Ruth Galloway series, shoreline erosion at the village of Broughton Sea's End has revealed the skeletons of six men, their arms bound. From the mineral content of their bones, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway can tell that they were all Germans. Most likely, DCI Harry Nelson reckons, they were killed by the local Home Guard when they tried to land during the Second World War. This is just the first complication in a story brimming with surprise twists, not all of them stemming from these murders. Ruth is a new mum of a daughter she adores but whose existence is raising eyebrows and is testing Ruth's assumption that she can be a mum, a professional archaeologist, a teacher, and an adjunct to a murder investigation all at the same time.

The House at Sea's End is smart, witty, complex, intriguing, generous — much like its protagonist.