Showing results by narrator "Jane McDowell" in All Categories

The murder of women priests in the shrine town of Walsingham sucks Dr. Ruth Galloway into an unholy investigation. Ruth's friend, Cathbad, is housesitting in Walsingham, a Norfolk village famous as a centre for pilgrimages to the Virgin Mary. One night, Cathbad sees a strange vision in the graveyard beside the cottage: a young woman dressed in blue.

Dr Ruth Galloway is flattered when she receives a letter from Italian archaeologist Dr Angelo Morelli, asking for her help. He's discovered a group of bones in a tiny hilltop village near Rome but doesn't know what to make of them. It's years since Ruth has had a holiday, and even a working holiday to Italy is very welcome!

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres and to explore what some of her much-loved creations such as Dr Ruth Galloway might have done outside of the novels. This collection gathers them all together in one splendid volume. Here are bite-sized tales to please and entertain every thriller taste as well as all Elly Griffiths' fans.

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. 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.

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 enquiry 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'.

In 1905 London, where glittering wealth collides with political unrest, Flora Maguire faces her most personal mystery yet. When a body is found on a train bound for Paddington and her beloved charge Viscount Edward Trent is accused of murder, Flora refuses to leave his fate in the hands of the police. Teaming up with her husband Bunny, Flora dives into a murky underworld of spies, communists, and fraudsters. And with the police surer than ever that Edward is their murderer, Flora must work fast to keep him safe.

Dr Ruth Galloway is called in when a child's bones are discovered near a prehistoric site on the north Norfolk salt marshes. Are they the remains of a local girl who disappeared ten years earlier - or are the bones much older? DCI Harry Nelson refuses to give up the hunt for the missing girl. Since she vanished, someone has been sending him creepy anonymous notes about ritual sacrifice. He knows that Ruth's expertise and experience could help him finally to put this case to rest.

Everything has changed for Dr Ruth Galloway. She has a new job, home and partner and is no longer North Norfolk police's resident forensic archaeologist. That is, until convicted murderer Amyas March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal. Nelson was always sure that March killed more women than he was charged with. Now March confirms this and offers to show Nelson where the other bodies are buried - but only if Ruth will do the digging.

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to 'go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there'. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle's baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead....

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. The 11th book featuring Lord Peter, set in a country church, is often named as the best detective story ever written. When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.

Some secrets hide in plain sight. Others are stolen in the dead of night... Flora Maguire has everything she could wish for—a beautiful Belgravia home, a devoted husband, and baby Arthur to dote on. But her perfect world is shattered when she accepts an invitation to tour St Philomena’s Children’s Hospital in poverty-stricken Southwark. The conditions are appalling, but the real horror lies in a chilling discovery: children are vanishing from the hospital.

Kate Palmer has relocated to Cornwall for a quiet life. Moving into picturesque Lavender Cottage with her sister, Angie, the little village of Lower Tinworthy should be the perfect place for their fresh new start. But within weeks of their arrival, there’s a death in the close-knit community.... A woman is found dead in the village hall, with her own kitchen knife next to the body, covered in blood. Kate, a practice nurse at the local medical center, begins to piece together the clues.

They plan to have a quiet country honeymoon. Then Lord Peter Wimsey and his bride, Harriet Vane, find the previous owner's body in the cellar. Set in a country village seething with secrets and snobbery, this is Dorothy L. Sayers' last full-length detective novel. Variously described as a love story with detective interruptions and a detective story with romantic interruptions, it lives up to both descriptions with style.

Dr Ruth Galloway is called in by a team of archaeologists investigating coastal erosion on the north Norfolk coast, when they unearth six bodies buried at the foot of a cliff. They seem to have been there a very long time. Ruth must help discover how long, and how on earth they got there. Ruth and DCI Nelson are drawn together once more to unravel the past. Tests reveal that the bodies have lain, preserved in the sand, for sixty years. The mystery of their deaths stretches back to the Second World War, a time when Great Britain was threatened by invasion.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his tenth appearance, he takes a job as an advertising copywriter to expose a ruthless killer. Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions....

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. His second appearance is a thrilling quest to save his own brother - the Duke of Denver - from the hangman. The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. In his eighth appearance (and the second book featuring Harriet Vane), he solves a murder on a deserted English beach. With an introduction by Elizabeth George. A young woman falls asleep on a deserted beach and wakes to discover the body of a man whose throat has been slashed from ear to ear...

London, 1903: Glamour thrives, but so do deadly secrets.Amid the dazzling theatres and opulent restaurants of fashionable Knightsbridge, Flora Maguire is drawn into a web of intrigue that stretches far beyond London’s polished facade.When the body of a prominent socialite and leader of the women’s suffrage movement is discovered, Flora’s curiosity leads her to uncover mysterious letters, cryptic ties to the Foreign Office, and a chilling connection to the assassination of a Baltic king.As she pieces together the clues, Flora realises this is no ordinary murder.

Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself—especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes, so surely it isn't prying if Dulcie helps things along? Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty young niece. And perhaps Dulcie herself, however ridiculous it might be, is falling, just a little, for Aylwin. Once life's little humiliations are played out, maybe love will be returned, and fondly, after all.

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.