Book Review: The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths

The Woman in Blue (Ruth Galloway #8)

By Elly Griffiths

Published and Sold by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 6, 2016

Purchased and read on Amazon Kindle

Links: Amazon, B&N, Powell's

Rating: Two and a Half Stars (out of five)

Note: This is the eighth book in a series.  I suppose some of what’s contained in this post could be construed as spoiler-ish if you haven’t read the first seven, though I do not discuss the actual mystery plots of any book besides The Woman in Blue (and do not spoil the resolution).

Hmmm.   So, I usually really like the Ruth Galloway mysteries.  Ruth is an archaeologist whose skills the police put to use on occasion, and since part of me is still a twelve-year-old girl who wants to be an archaeologist when she grows up, they’re right up my ally.  I do not and have never loved the primary “romance” (if that’s what it is) in these books, though I do like that Ruth is a single mother.  Maybe that’s why this book ultimately just didn’t work for me; there’s really no archaeology at all and the personal relationships have a central role to play—and a strange one at that.

The plot centers around two murders and one assault in the town of Walsingham, where there are Anglican and Catholic shrines.  Ruth gets a call from a grad school friend who’s now an Anglican priest right around the same time a young woman receiving treatment at a nearby hospital is murdered.  It turns out that Ruth’s friend, Hilary, has been receiving threatening letters from someone who doesn’t like women priests.  She’s in Walsingham on a conference for women who might want to become bishops, so she and Ruth meet up.  The second murder victim is another priest, a friend of Hilary’s who was also attending the conference.  DCI Nelson has to figure out what, if anything, a cult of the Virgin Mary has to do with the murders and/or the letters.  Also complicating the situation is that Nelson’s wife, Michelle, is assaulted by the murderer—leading to the revelation that she’s been having an affair with Tim, one of Nelson’s assistants.

Clearly, there’s a lot going on here.  Sadly, none of it has anything to do with archaeology, though Griffiths does gesture toward Ruth’s skills by having her dig around in a basement for some old artifacts.  While Ruth finds a clue that ends up being important to the case, she really doesn’t have much to do besides listen to Hilary’s worries and pass the information she learns along to Nelson.  Because of Michelle’s affair, Ruth and Nelson’s always awkward relationship gets even more awkward, and there’s some stuff here that I felt embarrassed to read.  It’s probably realistic, given that Nelson is married to Michelle and he and Ruth have a child together, but yikes!  The longer Griffiths drags that relationship on without some definite “we parent a shared child and nothing else” resolution, the less interested I get in reading these books.

The whole point of this series is supposed to be (I thought) that Ruth helps the police solve crimes by using her archaeology skills, and that didn’t happen here.  For me, this is the weakest entry in the series so far.  If there’s another new entry next year I’m sure I’ll read it, but if it’s not a stronger novel, I’ll no longer rush to read these right after they’re released.