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Patricia Abbott: FFB-NO RETURN ADDRESS, Anca Vlaopolos

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FFB Review: The Crossing Places: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths

  

Author Elly Griffiths has several different series. While I never could get into her other ones, despite a lot of trying on my part, her Ruth Galloway series is incredibly good and a favorite of mine. I keep hoping we will get another one. I remind you today that this excellent series begins here with The Crossing Places: A Ruth Galloway Mystery. From the archive….

 

 

Archeologist Ruth Galloway lives alone in a small cottage on the edge of an area known as “the Saltmarsh.” It is a coastal land of desolation where the sky and sea meet. It is a treacherous and dangerous land of stark beauty and one that few people enjoy. She is far from her south London upbringing as well as her parents. Considering her observations about them distance is a very good thing.

 

When she isn’t at her small cottage with her cats she is at the University of North Norfolk where she teaches forensic archeology. It is there, thanks to her department chair Phil, she first meets Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson. The inspector wants her to inspect some bones that have been found out near the bird sanctuary in another part of the Saltmarsh.

 

He hopes that the bones might be a missing child who vanished ten years ago. Her name was Lucy Downey. Since her disappearance a decade ago the inspector has been receiving strange letters from someone. A person who uses quotes from the Bible, Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, and other sources to taunt the inspector with clues. If Ruth Galloway can verify that the bones are of the missing child, he might just have the first solid piece of evidence to advance the case.

 

What follows is a complex and highly atmospheric read as Ruth Galloway gets drawn deeper and deeper in the mystery of the Lucy Downey case. At the same time, a bond begins between her and the inspector creating additional stress. It isn’t surprising when Ruth herself becomes a target as the case proceeds.

 

Character complexity is at work here from the beginning. In some senses Ruth is the classic clichéd spinster-- overweight, cats as her companions, no romantic interest, and a job that that fills her days. It is her observations on her parents, life, the world around her, and much more that fill the character with depth and meaning. The same is true to a lesser extent with the inspector though most of the book is told from watching Ruth.

 

The Crossing Places: A Ruth Galloway Mystery by Elly Griffiths is a solidly good start to what could be a very intriguing series. At least in this book, history, archaeology, and more take prominent roles resulting in the subtle education of the reader as the pages move by. A mystery that encourages the reader to think while also quietly teaching is a book that is very much worth reading.

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4tg5g3F

 

Go wild and get the entire 15 book series: https://amzn.to/41zKIHq

 

 

 

Material was obtained via the Plano Public Library System to read and review.

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015, 2021, 2026

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Guest Post: Excerpt from Ruth Snyder: The Real-Life Murderess Inspiring The Modern Femme Fatale by Justin L. Murphy

  

Please welcome author Justin L. Murphy to the blog today as he shares an excerpt from his new book, Ruth Snyder: The Real-Life Murderess Inspiring The Modern Femme Fatale.

 

Introduction

 

One Christmas, I received a collection entitled The Four Novels of James M. Cain. It was an out-of-print item released in 1988, purchased on Amazon, and consisted of the author’s classic works. Among them were The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, and Serenade. I’ve also watched the film Body Heat, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, a few times.

 

A few nights after I watched the film again, I also saw the 1946 adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice. When I earlier read the novel, I felt Frank Chambers was an asshole for wanting Cora Papadakis to take the rap for the murder of her husband, Nick. I noticed how much the story resembled Body Heat. Both depicted a married woman and her male lover plotting to kill her much older husband.

 

I dug around online to find any connections, and not only were The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity written by Cain, but they were also based on the same real-life murder. In 1927, Ruth Snyder and her lover, Henry Judd Gray, murdered her much older husband, Albert. These two were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. For almost a century, this event and its participants affected the culture and helped shape true crime and tabloid fodder in the modern era. It also helped form the hardboiled crime genre and defined its visual counterpart, film noir.

 

My aim with this book is to examine the case, its cultural influence, and the real-life family members it affected, despite their choices to remain silent. I hope those who read this come away with a better understanding of why Ruth Snyder and Henry Judd Gray committed this horrible act and what drove them to murder her husband, Albert. Above all, learn and examine the traces they leave behind, even a century later.

 

Regards,

Justin L. Murphy

A Writer Who Remains Curious

 

 

                                                       Chapter 1

 

The Art Editor and Telephone Operator First Meet

 

“Please excuse me.”

 

May Ruth Brown in the first conversation between her and her future husband, Albert Schneider.

 

Albert Edward Schneider was born in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York, on October 11, 1882, and was described as very intelligent with a passion for sports and the outdoors. One of six siblings, he maintained a close relationship with his mother, Mary Elizabeth Mealio Schneider, to the point that he painted and papered her walls. The man often tanned as an adult from hours of boating and fishing, which resulted from his love of the sea and the wind blowing in his curly hair. He was also interested in bowling and served as the art editor of Motor Boating Magazine, owned by William Randolph Hearst.

 

He fell in love with and became engaged to Jessie Guishard, even considering her the finest woman he ever met, but she contracted pneumonia before they could marry. She passed away on November 21, 1912, and Albert never got over her death. While working one day, he was irritated with a telephone operator who wanted to call a manufacturer to ease the situation. He spewed a great deal of harsh language at her expense, but soon regretted his behavior and apologized in person within a few hours. It was love at first sight between him and May Ruth Brown, the blonde-haired and blue-eyed nineteen-year-old everyone called "Brownie.” She was born on 125th Street in Manhattan on March 27, 1895. This woman quit school in the eighth grade, but attended night classes in shorthand, typing, and stenography. Soon, he visited her at work regularly. Albert offered her a reader and copyist job at his magazine; two weeks later, she jumped at the chance. It paid better, and Ruth quit the New York Telephone Company after two years.

 

They dated often, as Albert wanted to get her in bed, but premarital sex was looked down upon in the 1920s. Ruth was the daughter of old-fashioned Scandinavian parents, Harry Sorenson of Norway and Josephine I. Anderson of Sweden, and hoped to remain a virgin until the night she married. He proposed, and Ruth accepted. Her European heritage was ironic, as there were claims she wanted Albert to Americanize his name to “Snyder,” as “Schneider” sounded too German. Her father was a sailor who became a carpenter and changed his name to Brown for similar reasons. Other sources disputed that Albert did this of his own free will, and his application for military service in World War I also listed his last name as Snyder a decade earlier.

 

She longed for the finer things in life, a contrast to her frugal upbringing with her parents and a brother, Andrew, born on October 17, 1889, in Norway. During her childhood, several items she wanted couldn't be afforded. A blonde-haired doll, a Shetland pony, a wristwatch, a white bedroom set, or a party dress. Ruth passed by the storefront window to see the doll each day and was upset when someone else bought it. Her parents also couldn't afford to take in plays at the theater.

 

However, Harry and Josephine Brown spent money on Ruth's medical procedures since she had seizures due to epilepsy. The six-year-old girl underwent intestinal surgery before her appendix was removed a few years later, and the botched operation left her with internal issues. Her family attended the Methodist Episcopal Church, and she was raised to pray each night before bed, but her faith wasn't strong. The girl even questioned the existence of God. She also had no high academic achievements in school or career goals.

 

Ruth desired marriage and got it with Albert. She was a housewife who cleaned, sewed, and cooked. Her wish was that he would provide “the good life,” not the humdrum existence of her immigrant parents. After they married in 1915, she realized she and her husband were two different people. He was introverted, deaf in one ear, and preferred conversations about artwork and books. He wanted to sit back and smoke a pipe while in a smoking jacket and slippers. She desired to socialize, play bridge, flirt, and dance at speakeasies like the flappers who emerged during the Jazz Age. The extrovert also never took to his main passions, sailing and hiking, but instead wanted to see movies.

 

Not only did his in-depth conversations bore her, but Albert compared Ruth to his dead love each time she turned around. He sported a necktie pin with the initials J.G., named his sailboat “the Jessie G.," and had an entire photo album featuring pictures of the beloved he lost on vacations they took. He topped this off by hanging her portrait in the living room. She was angry and took it down. This led to many arguments between the couple as he wanted it back up. At her insistence, his boat was renamed "Ruth.”

 

Ruth soon learned she was pregnant, although Albert didn't want to be a father. He was even more upset that it was a daughter. Lorraine Snyder was born on November 15, 1917. This further drove a wedge between them, as she became a devoted mother while Albert grumbled at the sound of a baby's cry early in the morning. He also detested the smells of diapers and how she ruined her body after childbirth, though some claim she agreed with him on that matter.

 

As things progressed, he spent more time on his boat or tinkering with his Buick while Ruth tended to the child. He allowed her to spend eighty-five dollars of his paycheck, one hundred and fifteen dollars a week, to teach her how to pay their bills and save money, but she blew every penny. By some accounts, he subjected them to emotional and physical abuse if she didn’t keep house the way he wanted.

 

The couple moved to an apartment in Brooklyn and then a larger one in the Bronx after Lorraine was born. Once Albert got a promotion at Motor Boating Magazine, they settled into a muted pink two-and-a-half-story house with green trim in the Queen's Village section of Queens in 1923. A driveway to its right led to a rear garage, not far from a birdfeeder made from a saucepan and a pole. Five-year-old Lorraine often filled the pan and awaited them. Sure enough, Jessie Guishard's portrait was installed in the new living room. While Ruth sewed curtains, slipcovers, and clothes for herself and Lorraine, her mother Josephine soon moved in to care for the grandchild.

 

This at last enabled her free-spirited daughter to party, dance, and drink. She even earned the nickname, “Gay Tommie.” Friends often said, "Ruth’s a lot of fun; let’s have her over, but Albert’s kind of a stick.” She lunched on a smorgasbord buffet with a girlfriend at the Swedish restaurant Henry's in 1925 when the thirty-two-year-old wife and mother met a Corset and brassiere salesman named Henry Judd Gray, who wore glasses and sported a chin cleft. Concerned about her weight since having a child, she asked for his help, and fell in love on their second meeting. A phrase he used to entice buyers in upstate department stores was, “Here’s a new line of bandeaux we’re putting out.”

 

Born in Cortland, New York, on July 8, 1892, the beloved son of Charles Beach and Margaret Ursula Carr Gray, he had an older sister, also named Margaret. Like Albert Snyder, he bonded with his mother and loved sports, like tennis and football. Like Ruth, his family was religious and attended church, but cared little for education. Judd, as he preferred to be called, left high school after two years thanks to a bout with pneumonia, while some claimed he graduated. He worked with his father at a jewelry store, but he soon found employment with the Ben Jolie Corset Company. A great guy who played golf and bridge, and motorboated, also much like Ruth and Albert. He also loved to drive his prized vehicle, served as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I, and belonged to the Orange Lodge of Elks, as well as the Corset Salesmen of the Empire Club.

 

He married his wife, Isabel Kallenbach, a shy woman who stayed at home, after they had dated for several years when he was twenty-two, and she was twenty-one. Many of his co-workers had no idea he was married to her. Ironically enough, they wed in 1915, the same year as Albert and Ruth Snyder. They attended a First Methodist Church, but some contended he was Episcopalian, not too different from his secret lover and her parents. The corset salesman was also involved in their Sunday school, and they resided in East Orange, New Jersey. The two couples even had daughters at almost the same age. Judd and Isabel's child, Jane, was born on August 25, 1916, in Albert's birthplace of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.

 Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4kP5DPu

 

Justin L. Murphy ©2026

Justin L. Murphy has self-published numerous works of fiction and non-fiction through Amazon Kindle and Audible. His book Gene L. Coon: The Unsung Hero of Star Trek has been featured at events in Coon’s birthplace of Beatrice, Nebraska. Other books he has written and released include Jack Kirby: The Unsung Hero of Marvel, The Original Night Stalker: Portrait of A Killer, and Joseph James DeAngelo: His Reign of Terror Is Over. He enjoys Photography and sells his work through Adobe Stock and enters his photos in contests through Gurushots. He travels to Florida campgrounds with his mother and brother.

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Review: King of Ashes: A Novel by S. A. Cosby

 

A frequent theme of S. A. Cosby’s work, beyond racism, is the idea of a family haunted by a horrible tragic legacy. A legacy that goes back decades and is once again brought to light, eventually, in the here and now, by a massive triggering event. Such is the case in the latest book, King of Ashes: A Novel.

 

Roman Carruthers runs a wealth management firm in Atlanta. His clients, rappers, and others, sometimes need creative accounting. Sometimes they need a problem fixed and Roman turns those situations over to Khali. Not only is a friend from way back, the man has skills, and has put them to use in a variety of ways for various clients of the company, Carruthers and Associates. Roman has some of the best people in the business and that is a good thing because, as the novel begins, he has to go home to Virginia as his dad is in the hospital and in a coma.

 

It doesn’t play to be in a car hit by a freight train. He was and he may not survive. The Carruthers family is a legend in Jefferson Run, Virginia. Part of that is the fact that his parents, built from the ground up, a crematorium business that has been used for decades by families from miles around. While that is very positive, the other part of the legend is that after their mom vanished without a trace a number of years ago, quite a few folks became convinced that their father killed their mom and burned up the body and all the evidence.

 

For Roman, Neveah, and Dante, that disappearance and resulting speculation has haunted them nearly their entire lives. They were kids when it happened and their childhoods ended the day she vanished.

 

Roman, the oldest, eventually went on to college and has a well-paying life down in Atlanta. Neveah stepped into their mom’s shoes and took over taking care of dad and keeping the business going. The youngest, Dante, is circling deeper and deeper in a pit of alcohol, drugs, and other vices. The family, what is left of it, is a shell of what it was and rotting from within.

 

Now their father, the possible murderer of their mom, and the man known to all as the “King of Ashes” lies in a coma. From what Naveah says, somebody might have tried to kill him. If so, it would be the latest in a string of events that have happened in recent weeks. Naveah didn’t bother to tell him as Roman was in Atlanta and hasn’t been home to help in years. Now he is and he plans on digging into what happened.

 

What follows is a complicated and often violent crime fiction read as Roman tries to save his family from the situation and their own self-destructive impulses. He has those same impulses in his own way as well as he tries to right wrongs and come to terms with a horrible and tragic family legacy.

 

There is a lot going on via multiple levels as one would expect from this talented author. I’m certainly not going to disrespect the author or the work by revealing any more of the story or the themes in the work. Certainly not a read for the squeamish as violence abounds, this is a work that will linger in the mind long after the read is finished.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4ljBI0P

 

As expected, the publisher, Flatiron Books, totally ignored my multi month request on NetGalley, so I had to wait for the Dallas Public Library System to get it in. The digital version arrived first, via Libby/Overdrive, ending the need for the print version that is just now arriving in the system.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

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