THE CHALK PIT

Name: THE CHALK PIT
Author: Elly Griffiths
ISBN: 978-0-544-75031-9

by Elly Griffiths ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 30, 2017

Like its predecessors (The Woman in Blue, 2016, etc.), Griffith’s ninth is complex and character-driven, providing an...

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The discovery of some not-so-old bones opens up surprising possibilities of a mysterious underground world.

Archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is called in when several bones are found in one of the many underground chalk mine tunnels under the city of Norwich, England. The architect planning an underground restaurant is hoping they’re ancient, but testing reveals not only that they’re fairly recent, but that they’d been boiled and cut open, a sinister hint of cannibalism. Meantime, Ruth’s one-time lover DCI Nelson, the father of her daughter, Kate, is asked by rough sleeper Eddie O’Toole to look into the disappearance of Barbara Murray, another rough sleeper who hasn’t been seen in any of her usual haunts. When Eddie’s found stabbed to death and soon after another homeless man is also found stabbed, Nelson begins to take the search for Barbara more seriously. Then a middle-class mother of four vanishes from her home, and the police go all out to find her. While all this is happening, Ruth and Nelson, who remains married, maintain a delicately balanced relationship. Nelson’s wife allows him to spend time with Kate, but neither of his grown daughters knows of her existence. The missing housewife has one thing in common with the rough sleepers: they all spent time at a center run by an ex-con who’s found religion and changed his ways. Wild rumors abound about the old chalk mine tunnels that run for miles under Norwich, and a statement that someone made about Barbara going underground lead the police to some hidden doors. Is it possible that a literally underground group could be responsible for the deaths?

Like its predecessors (The Woman in Blue, 2016, etc.), Griffith’s ninth is complex and character-driven, providing an excellent mystery whose very last sentence will leave you yearning for the next installment.

Pub Date: May 30, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-544-75031-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

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THE FROZEN PEOPLE
by Elly Griffiths

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by Elly Griffiths

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THE BIG SLEEP

by Raymond Chandler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 1938

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A good one in the tough school, in which private detective Marlowe is hired to investigate a blackmailing and finds himself bucking a well-run gang, several murders, and the D A's office. Hard-boiled, fast paced, plenty of action, some sensationalism. Not for conservatives.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 1938

ISBN: 0394758285

Page Count: 244

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1938

Categories:

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE

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COLLECTED STORIES
by Raymond Chandler

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THE LITTLE SISTER
by Raymond Chandler

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RAYMOND CHANDLER'S PHILIP MARLOWE
by Raymond Chandler edited by Byron Preiss

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WAY DOWN ON THE HIGH LONELY

by Don Winslow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 16, 1993

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Looks like Neal Carey, the peripatetic agent of that free- lance justice troop Friends of the Family, will never get back to New York to write his dissertation on Tobias Smollett. This time he's sprung from three years in a Chinese monastery (The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, 1992) only to be sent undercover as a ranch-hand in the Nevada plains to scout out the Sons of Seth, a white- supremacist flock that's his best hope for locating two-year-old Cody McCall, snatched from his Hollywood mother during a paternal weekend. Neal settles in deep, of course, and his ritual ordeals- -having to sell out the rancher who took him in, breaking off his romance with tough schoolmarm Karen Hawley, going up against rotten-apple Cal Strekker, getting ordered to kill his Friendly mentor Joe Graham—are as predictable as the trademark dose of mysticism as the bodies pile up, and as the certainty that when the dust settles, Neal won't be back at school. Winslow's Aryan crazies don't have the threatening solidity of Stephen Greenleaf's (Southern Cross, p. 1102 ), but Neal's latest adventure is full of entertaining derring-do.