Readers know from the opening paragraph of The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths that Covid-19 will have a role in this tale. The read begins in late February of 2020 and Ruth is in her mom’s house going through her things. Ruth’s father, Arthur, is away with his new wife, Gloria, who would have like to redecorate a bit when they get back. It isn’t as harsh as it sounds as many months have passed since Jean died and Gloria and Arthur later married. Gloria has been very good about everything, but it is time to move forward.
It is as she goes through a shoebox
of pictures that have been labeled “private” that Ruth has found a picture of
her cottage. Several other pictures were strange and confusing, but this one
stopped her dead. While it is her cottage, a place Jean always disliked and
made her feelings very known, the cottage looks a bit different and not just
because of the age of the photograph. On the back of the picture “Dawn 1963” is
written in her mom’s handwriting. Ruth was born in 1968. The picture also means
Mom was at her cottage thirty years before Ruth ever saw the place, let alone
bought it.
That mystery of what her mother was
doing won’t go away when she returns home to her cottage. She begins
researching the history of her house as well as the houses of the neighbors.
Somebody may know why her Mom was at the cottage. A place that she always acted
like she had never seen before Ruth bought it.
Nelson also has a couple of his own
mysteries to solve. One is his future as he remains married to Michelle, who
now knows everything thanks to recent events. Things are very unsettled as Michelle has gone off with
their youngest child, George, back home to Blackpool on holiday. Nelson and
their dog, Bruno, have been left to fend for themselves.
That means working even more for
Nelson as he has very few outside interests besides his job. Fortunately for
him, a current case is bothering him. Samantha Wilson was found dead in her
home, lying on her bead, and with an empty pill bottle. Everything in the
bedroom looks like a suicide and there is not a real reason to question it.
Except for the cooked Weight Watcher’s meal sitting in the microwave. Who puts
a meal in and starts cooking it before going to bed to die by suicide?
As various characters go about their
lives, the news of Covid-19 is just beginning. For example, Judy and Cathbad are
preparing with supplies and Cathbad has already figured out there with be a
shortage of toilet paper. Ruth isn’t paying a lot attention as she has students
to teach and a department to run and seems to expect an occasional minor inconvenience
if anything. Which is rather surprising when the reader thinks about it given
her knowledge of history and archeology and her awareness of a “plague pit” in
the local area. Then there is Nelson who is lonely and annoyed by the boss a
bit more than normal as she is going on about using hand sanitizer and seems to
be taking a ghoulish pleasure in everything.
What follows is a complicated read
where mysteries of all types, personal and professional, take a back seat to Covid-19
and its disruptive effects as the weeks pass and it comes far too close to home
affecting everyone greatly. At the same time, Ruth copes with missing and
possibly endangered students and Nelson deals with several cases that may or
may not be suicides. Not to mention the relationship he has with Ruth.
There is a lot going on in The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by
Elly Griffiths. The Covid-19 aspect is a major character that dwarfs
everything else in this complicated read. At times, that aspect made the book tough
going for this reader. At the same time, the author handled it well throughout
the very complicated read. The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery
by Elly Griffiths is an entertaining story and one that is strongly
recommended.
My read came via an ARC and NetGalley. Per the publisher, reviewers were mandated to hold reviews until publication day. That is today.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2022
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