The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths - #BookReview #RuthGallowaySeries

The unassuming shop in a King's Lynn backstreet has lived many lives. Once, beyond most people's living memory, it was a bakery. The oven still remains and has, in successive iterations, been a focal point and dining nook and was also, for many decades, boarded up completely. The building has been a cafe, a greengrocer's and an 'Emporium of Wonder' (a junk shop), and is now well on its way to becoming a cafe again. A sign ouside says 'The Red Lady Tea Rooms, opening August 2021', and another informs interested passers-by that Edward Spens and Co are in charge of the renovation...

***

When builders renovating a café in King's Lynn unearth a human skeleton, they call for DCI Harry Nelson and Dr Ruth Galloway, Head of Archaeology at the University of North Norfolk. Ruth is preoccupied with the threatened closure of her department and by her ever-complicated relationship with Nelson.

The bones are identified as those of Emily Pickering, an archaeology student who went missing in the 1990s. Emily attended a course run by her Cambridge tutor. Suspicion falls on him and on another course member - Ruth's friend Cathbad. As they investigate, Nelson and his team uncover a tangled web of relationships within the student group and the adults leading them. Then, just when the team seem to be making progress, Cathbad disappears.

The trail leads Ruth and Nelson to the Neolithic flint mines in Grime's Graves. The race is on, first to find Cathbad and then to exonerate him, but will Ruth and Nelson uncover the truth in time to save their friend?

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When I first ordered this book from the library, I was number sixty-four in the queue. So when the notification came through that it was waiting for me in my local library I was so pleased. Not only because I was finally going to be able to read it but because it was a couple of days until my holiday and I made sure I found time to pop in there, borrow it and read it while I was away.

I am a big fan of the Ruth Galloway series. I have read each of the books in the series and had eagerly awaited this final book. It did not disappoint. It was lovely to spend more time with Ruth, Nelson, Cathbad and a range of other characters who I have become familiar with during the previous fourteen books.

It was set in the early post pandemic period in Norfolk. Throughout the series Norfolk has played a major role and is as important as any of the characters. 

The question on the tip of the tongues of those who have read this series, is how things ended up between Ruth and Nelson. Well, without giving anything away, I was very satisfied by the conclusion of the book, and several loose ends were tied up. However, you will have to read the book yourself to find out.

Unsurprisingly from a writer of this calibre, the book is well written and engaging. The author is a very skilled storyteller, and I have been immediately captivated by each of the books.  This book is no exception.

Reading this book has been a bittersweet experience as it is the final book. It has been a fantastic series, and I will miss this set of characters who, having spent fifteen books plus a novella with them, they feel more like friends. I guess I will just have to start on one of Ms. Griffiths' other series.

ISBN: 978 1529409710

Publisher:  Quercus

Formats:  e-book, audio, hardback and paperback

No. of Pages:  384 (paperback)

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About the Author:

Bestselling crime author Elly Griffiths worked in publishing before becoming a full-time writer.

Her series of Dr Ruth Galloway novels, featuring a forensic archaeologist, are set in Norfolk and regularly hit the Sunday Times top ten in hardback and paperback. The series has won the CWA Dagger in the Library and has been shortlisted three times for the Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year. There are twelve books in the series so far with number thirteen to be published in February 2021.

Her Brighton-based mystery series set in the 1950s and 1960s is inspired partly by her grandfather's life on the stage and the war magician Jasper Maskelyne, who claimed to have spent the war creating large scale illusions to misdirect the enemy. One of the two leading characters in the series, Max Mephisto, is based on Maskelyne. 

In 2017 she was Programming Chair of Theakston's Old Peculiar Crime Festival in Harrogate, the oldest and best-established crime fiction festival in the UK.

In 2018 Elly wrote her first standalone novel The Stranger Diaries. The novel was a top 10 paperback bestseller, selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and as a summer 2019 Richard and Judy book.

In 2019 Elly published her first children's book in spring 2019 to great reviews with a second following in 2020.

Elly Griffiths lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their two grown children.

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*Disclosure: I only recommend books I would buy myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post contains an affiliate link from which I may earn a small commission.