The Chalk Pit: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 9

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Immediately next door is a housing development construction site, announced on the fence banners as “Chalk Glade” and as yet only an empty white pit. If you are a resident of another country or region, please select the appropriate version of Tripadvisor for your country or region in the drop-down menu. This series has lost none of its lustre and with Griffith’s eye for forcing her characters to evolve (even those that are secondary to the Ruth/Nelson/Michelle love triangle) and the promise of more to come, readers would be advised to stick tight! DS Judy Johnson canvasses the community of rough sleepers and drop-in centres and is given word that Barbara may have “gone underground”, but whether this is a figure of speech, an urban myth or really a series of underground thoroughfares, Nelson and his team struggle to ascertain. Everywhere the ground is cushioned with wet yellow and brown leaves, moss, ivy, sticks, feathers, angular chunks of chalk that I can scratch and come away with white under my fingernail.

It was very well put together - a weaving together of the main characters’ personalities and personal affairs, the Norfolk location, issues of homelessness/sleeping rough, local history, archeology, police work and mystery. I realize, and later confirm on Google maps, that this is a very small pocket of wildness, dense as it is with turns and life.You can spot relics of the railway line in our Pan Mill Meadows reserve, and the cement kilns have been rediscovered at Dodnor Creek and Dickson’s Copse Local Nature Reserve. A wide range of formerly more common chalk grassland plant species are present, representing a relict habitat that once covered much of the Wolds landscape. Time certainly flies when in the company of forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway, DCI Harry Nelson and Elly Griffith’s gang of assorted cast members and I cannot deny that every moment has been a pure and unadulterated joy.

The brush on the cliff is busy with birds: jay, robin, skirling magpie, blackbirds, jackdaw silhouettes, wood pigeon flaps; high above, a raptor—red kite—floats sideways and back on the billow of wind, forked tail and sculpted wings twitching.In my 20’s, when I was less worried about trespasses, I used to love creeping around in old mothballed houses and schools. We rely on volunteers to help with many tasks on our sites and also need people who are happy to regular visit the site be our “eyes and ears”, this means we can respond much quicker to issues. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. I don’t remember ever reading anything by Elly Griffiths before but I’ve been told recently that there are other in this series just as good as ‘The Chalk Pit’.