Audiobook Review: The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths

The Locked Room
Author: Elly Griffiths
Narrator: Jane McDowell
Series: Ruth Galloway Mystery (Book 14)
Publication: HarperAudio (June 28, 2022)
Length: 9 hours and 41 minutes

Description: Pandemic lockdowns have Ruth Galloway feeling isolated from everyone but a new neighbor—until Nelson comes calling, investigating a decades-long string of murder-suicides that’s looming ever closer, in USA Today Elly Griffiths’ penultimate novel in the beloved series.

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage—before she lived there—with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cot­tage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of Covid-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance.

Meanwhile, Nelson is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links a case to an archaeological dis­covery, he breaks curfew to visit Ruth and enlist her help. But the further Nelson investigates the deaths, the closer he gets to Ruth’s isolated cot­tage—until Ruth, Zoe, and Kate all go missing, and Nelson is left scrambling to find them before it’s too late.

My Thoughts: The fourteenth Ruth Galloway mystery coincides with the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic. Ruth discovers a photograph of her cottage when she is going through her mother's things now that three years have passed since her death. The photo comes as a surprise since it was taken years before Ruth bought her home and it has a mysterious label on the back: Dawn 1963. She wonders what connection her mother had to an area that she didn't like as an adult.

Ruth and Kate also have a new neighbor who is renting Bob's cottage while he is back in Australia. Zoe is a nurse who is very busy during the Covid crisis but seems intent on befriending Ruth and Kate. Ruth and Zoe hit it off. But Nelson, who is separated from Michelle, is more suspicious. He discovers that the nurse had changed her name after being tried for murdering some of her elderly patients. She was acquitted and the real murderer subsequently charged and convicted but she's still infamous. 

Nelson is still being pressured to retire but finds himself investigating some suspicious deaths: women committing suicide seemingly out of the blue. His team is already adjusting to social distancing and working from home, but Nelson misses his team meetings where they can bounce ideas off each other. When Judy's partner Cathbad gets Covid the whole epidemic becomes real to all of them as they watch him being put on a ventilator and almost die. 

Then Zoe disappears and Kate and Nelson unite to find her. Kate and Nelson are still feeling out their relationship. Nelson is spending a lot of time with Ruth and Kate on the marsh, but Kate isn't sure that she could ever live with Nelson though he is pushing for that. The only thing is that he wants to leave Ruth's home and make another home for them together maybe even moving back to Blackpool.

This was a very authentic look at the early days of the Covid epidemic and illustrates that crime didn't stop and some normal problems like spousal abuse had the room to get even worse with everyone sheltering in place. I had also never thought about the plight of university students who either were from other countries or who had no home to return to when the lockdowns started. 

This was another enjoyable episode in a long-running series. 

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.