The Dr Ruth Galloway mysteries just get better and better.

The Chalk Pit is about underground tunnels in Norwich, about some dead men and some missing women. It is about Harry and Ruth and their tumultuous relationship, about Ruth and her parents and about Ruth and her daughter. All the regulars have their parts to play, and there is the usual quota of jokes and witty remarks and commentary on people’s differing lifestyles.

I had to sit and read the final third of the book in one go, tensed up and completely involved. I was glad of two things – that Griffiths gave the aftermath of the events in the book a full followup (it drives me mad when authors simply cut off the story and don’t tell you what became of most of the characters) and that it wasn’t as harsh as it might have been.

I cared hugely about the fate of those involved, and the resolution of the main plot was very moving, and actually had me shedding tears. And that’s before we got to the final events in people’s personal lives… oh no, do we have to wait a year to find out what happens next?

As ever, I could quote from it endlessly…
- Nelson’s boss Jo Archer is a tremendous character: ‘Ruth isn’t going to be bossed about by a woman in tight trousers who thinks she’s Helen Mirren playing Jane Tenison.’ 

- Nelson finding the presence of his 20-something daughter awkward: ‘Damn Laura with her kindness and domesticity. Shouldn’t she be out at a rave with an unsuitable boyfriend? Where did they go wrong as parents?’ 

- Ruth knows that the camera is meant to add ten pounds but in her case it felt more like fifty. When she appeared on screen in her white coat it looked like there had been an avalanche.

But the book is also, below its dancing quick-witted plot, about the way we operate as a society, about the poor and under-privileged, about those who aren’t coping with modern life, about the homeless and their helpers. It’s about the way women are perceived and treated, about the values we live by and would wish to live by, about the contrasts in our daily lives. It is an amazing achievement.

I wish there was a new Elly Griffiths book every month.

I discovered the Ruth Galloway series over Christmas, read them all back-to-back, and was then thrilled to get my hands on an advance copy of The Chalk Pit, which is Elly Griffiths's latest one. You don't need to have read the other books to make sense of the story but I recommend that you do. Elly Griffiths has created such wonderful characters that they feel like old friends and I love seeing how they develop from book to book. Regular readers will 'get' the joke of DCI Harry Nelson being sent on a speed awareness course at the start of the story and that he now has a female boss who thinks he's a dinosaur. She may have a point but that's part of his charm!

The story starts with Dr Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist, investigating a collection of bones that have been found in a tunnel beneath Norwich Guildhall during renovations to turn an undercroft into an underground restaurant. The bones are shiny, like 'glass', and have strange cut marks on them. Even if you don't read a lot of crime fiction, you'll probably realise the sinister implication.

Meanwhile, Nelson has been approached by a homeless man he knows only as 'Aftershave Eddie', who is worried about a female friend of his (also homeless) who has gone missing. Shortly after, Eddie is found dead on the steps of the police station where Nelson works - and not from natural causes.

The Chalk Pit is a more serious book than its predecessors, dealing with the plight of the homeless and how others view them. When another woman goes missing, this time a middle-class mother of four, the contrast is made between the amount of time and police manpower spent searching for her to that of Eddie's homeless friend.

I've always been a sucker for stories with secret tunnels (I blame Enid Blyton) and I loved the historical background of the chalk mines and labyrinth of tunnels beneath Norwich. My only niggle was that I'd have liked to have had more archaeology and less police procedure, more of Ruth and Cathbad, and less of Judy - who I do like, just not as much as Ruth, Cathbad and Nelson!

Right at the end of the story there are a couple of revelations about major characters that made my jaw drop. I cannot wait until the next book in the series!

Recommended - particularly if you like a slice of history with your murder mysteries.

I've read all of the Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries by Elly Griffiths so was very excited to read this latest part in the saga - and I have to say it didn't let me down!

Like the others in the series, this book could be read as a standalone book - the characters and their relationships are explained to a sufficient degree to allow a newcomer to pick it up and enjoy it, however for those loyal fans, Elly Griffiths hasn't disappointed. The storylines are strong - about an underground web of tunnels under the city of Norwich, missing women, and the world of people who sleep rough - and really draw you in. I read the book in just two sittings because I was gripped by the storyline (and not just about the personal relationships of the characters). The characters are strong in their own right, and by this 9th book, I care about them and what happens to them.

I had wondered if the series would start to lose something as it went on but it hasn't - this one has become one of my favourites. Elly Griffiths has a knack of leaving you wanting more at the end of her books, and this is no exception - I can't wait for the next one!

My review has also been posted on GoodReads

I was late picking up on Elly Griffiths as an author. The beauty of this is you can read one after another and get sucked in to the world she has created. A great read.

The Chalk Pit is the 9th in Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway books. It’s written in the present tense which I find somewhat jarring (strange because in other books such as Eyes Like Mine, which I reviewed in this post, I hardly noticed the tense). But I did enjoy this book because of the characters, in particular Ruth, her daughter, Kate (now nearly 6 years old), DCI Harry Nelson and his wife Michelle, DS Clough, DS Judy Johnson and Cathbad, the part-time druid, who now looks after their two young children. I also like the archaeological investigations, although in The Chalk Pit that is not the main focus.

It centres on the plight of homeless people and the maze of tunnels under Norfolk. The bones are found during the excavations when an underground restaurant in one of the tunnels is proposed. One of the homeless women, Barbara, disappears and there are rumours that she has ‘gone underground‘. It becomes a murder mystery when two more of the homeless, ‘Aftershave Eddie’ and then ‘Bilbo’ are found dead, both stabbed. Then two local women go missing – Sam who has four children and Cassandra, Clough’s partner (they have one child). And it soon becomes clear that all these events are linked.

There is a Who’s Who of the main characters at the end of the book giving their backstories which helps if you haven’t read the earlier books. But I think it really helps to read the Ruth Galloway books in order as the recurring characters’ lives progress with each one, making it difficult to write much more about The Chalk Pit without giving away spoilers. I’ll just add that one of my favourite characters, Cathbad, doesn’t have a large role, which disappointed me. And I really would prefer if Elly Griffiths had written this in the past tense as she has in her Stephens and Mephisto series, which I prefer.

My thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an ARC of this book which will be published on 23 February 2017.

This is another great release from one of my favourite authors, as part of the Ruth Galloway series that I always really enjoy. As it’s set in Norfolk, I enjoy reading about the area and when some of the story moves into Norwich I recognise lots of landmarks (though some of course are made up).

The story was interesting, particularly with its focus on the homeless community in Norwich – it’s nice to see a book that is actually quite objective and reasoned about people on the streets, instead of failing to treat them as actual human beings. The idea of an ‘underground’ community was really fun to read about and an interesting idea.. Elly Griffiths does a great job of treating the issue of homelessness seriously and, I felt, with respect but still adds a bit of light-hearted fun to the story. I also quite liked that everything wasn’t too ‘neatly tied up’ and left some things unsolved, leaving me looking forward to her next instalment!

The characters are as great as ever (one of the many reasons I enjoy this series so much); I’ll always love Ruth, despite her sometimes making what I feel are questionable decisions regarding her personal life – but hey, no one’s perfect which makes me like her even more really! I also really like Nelson, his wife Michelle, Cathbald, Judy - even Clough, despite his odd views sometimes! In fact almost all of the Police force and supporting characters are really interesting characters and fun to read about (though some characters definitely featured less in this novel than I’d have liked, leaving what felt like a bit of a hole without them).

I am generally a big fan of Police procedurals anyway, which certainly helps, but some procedurals can be a bit dry at times. However the Ruth Galloway series is far more than that – each book has adventure, suspense and mystery as well, and this is no different. They all set such a high standard and I thoroughly enjoyed reading every page!

This is book 9 in the Ruth Galloway series and I didn't enjoy it as much as the previous ones. I found it just a bit slow. All the usual characters were featured and the plot is centred around finding some bones, kidnap and homeless people. I enjoyed the insight into the lives of Ruth and DCI Nelson more than the plot. Thank you Net Galley for my copy. I reviewed on Goodreads.

The Ruth Galloway novels just keep getting better and better. The Chalk Pit begins (naturally) with the discovery of some bones, moves onto the murder of a rough sleeper and the disappearance of two women - one another rough sleeper and the other a mother of four. Are these connected?

I love the humour and compassion of these novels and the plots are sufficiently intricate to be interesting and not obvious, but I especially like the relationships between the characters and the ways in which these change and develop over the course of the novels. Highly recommended.

This is a book that was a joy to read for me. It helps that I am a committed fan of the author and her two crime series; but this novel is special for me as it places the realities of being homeless and a rough sleeper at the heart of the plot.
I know of no better example where this subject has been treated with compassion and understanding while being fundamental to the storyline.
It is also opportune that I am also concurrently reading Beneath the Killing Fields: Exploring the Subterranean Landscapes of the Western Front by Matthew Leonard. In his book, he talks about WWI being the first major conflict that took the fight underground using tunnels to mine the enemy’s trenches but also to seek shelter from the barrage and killing above. Indeed, he mentions in passing that historically we've associated the burial of bodies under the earth. Yet, the irony on the western front was that men lay unburied, broken and dead in no man's land, while the living took shelter underground.
Elly Griffith's new book in her excellent Ruth Galloway series, The Chalk Pit has its inspiration in the tunnels under Norwich. As a forensic archaeologist, she is call to a system of tunnels near under the City when bones are discovered.
The theme thereafter in underground and Elly plays it for all its worth. This is one of the reasons reading her books is so much fun. The subject is treated seriously but she can't help references to the Jam's hit going underground and even has a character wearing a logo top with a lyric by Velvet Underground.
The story is initially about a homeless women who goes missing. Rather than spelling out that such a person was less valued or part of an underclass she lets the story reveal the facts. Firstly, it is some time before anyone realises she is missing (it seems such people drift in and out as part of their itinerant ways). Then it becomes difficult tracing next of kin or finding other hostel uses to speak to the police. When a further couple of incidents occur in relation to 2 male rough sleepers it seems no-one knows their real names or will miss then either. But they were friends of the missing woman and one thought she was 'going underground'.
Contrast this to what happens when further women disappear and the police response becomes more rapid and completely ranked up, with widespread publicity and deployment of resources.
Nothing is said but in passing it speaks of the differences perhaps society places on people's lives.
As I've stated, the author doesn't make a big play of this, it just happens in the telling of the story. However, in so doing she speaks again about a separate class of homeless individuals that would rather seek refuge in caves and tunnels, out of sight, rather than more structured living and the process of hostel into council accommodation, rarely of their choosing or close to people they know and understand.
I loved the fact that 'Charlie' trusted Cloughie because the detective had real conversations with him and treated him as a person. This is spot on, and is not to the credit of most of us.
There is little stereotyping of characters and real development of the relationships we are aware of already 8 books in. It is so clever that Katie, Ruth's daughter is brought into this story as she is into drama and plays a young Alice in an adaptation of a Lewis Carroll classic but updated as "Alice's adventures underground".
A cracking mystery and police procedural that has at its heart the relationship between Ruth a single parent with Kate and DCI Harry Nelson (Kate's father). There is much to commend it and is neatly brought up to date with an informative epilogue. The characters' pen portrait were inspired and could be read without spoiling the story first by anyone new to Elly Griffiths. (Where have you been? She won the 2016 CWA Dagger in the Library). This is a wonderful writer at the height of her undoubted skill and powers. Val McDermid is a fan, she stops just short of calling this series a guilty pleasure. The best thing for me in the whole book was the care to write an Obituary for one of the homeless who lost their life in this fictional account. To me it shows that this subject was brought into focus by the author's research. When she describes the pauper funeral for the homeless man attended by just a few police officers involved in the case, it reminded me of a time in my first job at an unemployment benefit office. Those signing as NFA. No fixed abode, would have to sign in person to collect their giros one morning each week. The office smelt rank as so many unwashed bodies lined up for their money; but we became a constant in their lives. I was one of three who attended a funeral when one man sadly passed away. That was the 70's and thankfully much has changed in society since. However, rough sleeping remains an issue and this book in part raises that again like all good fiction can. The word used of them by Elly here is diffident, well said. A great read; this book is out later in February, please take time to read it. For our word, should be and can be difference, you and I can make that happen.

This is the ninth outing for Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist, and her police colleagues and it doesn’t disappoint.
During the excavation of a site for an underground restaurant, bones are found, and Ruth is called in to establish their age. It then transpires that in the chalk under parts of Norwich, there are many ancient passages and caverns, leading between churches and other old buildings.
Babs, a rough sleeper has gone missing, and the police are told that she has “gone underground”.
Then two more rough sleepers are killed and other women go missing.
How are these all linked?
The book gives an insight into the lives of people who fall through the cracks, and of those who do their best to help them.

Separately, Kate is in a play which is modern version of Alice in wonderland, more underground!

Harry Nelson, Judy, Cloughie, and Jo their new boss are all involved, and it’s good to revisit them and their lives.
There is a dramatic ending, and yet another twist in the Ruth/Nelson saga.
I hope there will be another episode!

Thanks to Quercus book and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

After bones are discovered in the network of tunnels under Norwich, DCI Nelson has a murder to investigate when it is revealed that they are part of a recent burial. To add a macabre twist, Dr. Ruth Galloway has suspicions that the bones have been boiled - could a cannibal be at large? Meanwhile, a homeless woman has gone missing, the only clue seemingly being that she has 'gone underground'. Are the two cases connected and what, if anything, links them to the disappearance of another local woman? It is up to Nelson and Dr. Ruth Galloway to unearth the mysteries of The Underground before it is too late...

Over the past year, I have read all of Elly Griffiths' 'Ruth Galloway' books and The Chalk Pit was on my list of most anticipated books of 2017. Ruth has become one of my favourite fictional characters and it has been fascinating to see the character development of her and other favourites such as Cathbad and Nelson. All of the characters are extremely well-written, likeable and very realistic.

With homelessness seemingly on the rise, The Chalk Pit is a very topical read and Elly Griffiths deals with the issue in a sensitive and sympathetic way. It is hard not to feel for the plight of the rough sleepers, and people's differing attitudes towards them is all too true. DS Judy Johnson really comes into her own in this book and the obituary written by her at the end of the book is very moving.

As someone who loves historical as well as crime fiction, I have found Elly Griffiths' books a perfect read. Although there is less of a historical angle in The Chalk Pit, there is still enough about old bones and communities to whet the appetite! As you would expect with any book involving DCI Nelson and Dr. Galloway, there are some murders to investigate along the way, which tie in neatly to the disappearance of the women.

Elly Griffiths has written another fantastic book and one that, in my opinion, cements her place as one of the best writers of a crime series. My only regret is that I have now finished all the Ruth Galloway books and know that there will be a while until the next one!

Elly Griffiths is on top form with the latest Ruth Galloway novel. set in the lonely and mysterious Norfolk countryside there are as usual some dark undertones in this novel and I loved it.

I had not read any other books in the Ruth Galloway series and that was my mistake. As such, I read this book but I cant say I got anything out of it. Curiosity probably will have me reading the first one or two books in the series and if I enjoy them, I will definitely re-read this one and possibly change my opinion.

Thank you Net Galley. A nice mystery that straddles the line between cozy/not cozy very well. The narrative keeps you turning the pages and then before you know it the book is over. I enjoyed it very much.

This is another of my favourite series. As with all series, although the main story is contained within the book, to get the best from the characters insofar as development, backstory and series story arcs are concerned, it is always better to start from book one and read in order. Although with us at book 9 now (wow!) you'll have a lot of catching up to do!
Starting a new Ruth Galloway book is like stepping back into a wonderful, comfortable world, revisiting old friends and maybe making one or two new ones. In this book we find Ruth entering an underground tunnel where, yes you guessed it, bones have been discovered. It appears that they have been boiled, bit weird, but their presence could have an impact on some building works that is currently on hold pending the outcome of Ruth's work. Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating the disappearance of a homeless man who had approached him asking for help to find another homeless person who has gone missing. With leads few and far between, it isn't until a housewife also disappears, feared abducted, that things really hot up for him and his team. A sad but true indication of the value society puts on life these days. And then things get personal for Clough as his wife is also taken. Are all these disappearances connected, and if so how and why? More importantly, will Nelson, together with Ruth's help as their paths cross once more here, get there in time to save everyone?
I really love this series. I warmed to Ruth right from book one and I love that, despite all her intelligence, she is still a bit of a mess when it comes to her personal life. Even at book 9, there is no sign of the series flagging. With every new addition, Ms Griffiths manages to retain the sharpness and uniqueness that I have learned to love from her stories. Have to admit though to not being the biggest fan of Nelson's new boss but I suspect that she will be a slow burn for me, I reckon that she is someone that I will grow to like her in future books; if she sticks around!
If there was one thing I would have liked to have been done differently it's that I missed Cathbad. He is head and shoulders my favourite character in the series but I guess this book is just not his time to shine. He still played a reasonable part, just more on the periphery of things here, whereas Judy was more front and center.
We also had an interesting insight into the world of the homeless here. I was especially interested in the world they had created for themselves. Potential spoilers prevent me expanding here though sadly, but that side of the story really intrigued me.
Pacing was, as usual, well done. As the story ebbs and flows, the pacing speeds up and slows down to match. As with the other books in the series, the setting is a character in its own right and, at times, the book becomes very atmospheric and I could almost feel myself actually there, watching it all being played out. I felt that included.
All in all, another great addition to this already established series. I'll have to wait and see what happens next.

My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

http://www.librarything.com/work/17833192