Theakston Crime Novel Of The Year Award - Elly Griffiths

Watch out! Especially if you are a Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson fan. There is a spoiler alert in the next paragraph; prepare for some shocking news.

Like all of us who survived the COVID pandemic, life has moved on. It is no different for Dr Ruth Galloway and DCI Harry Nelson in The Locked Room, Elly Griffiths’ fourteenth novel to feature them both, but it is also the penultimate in the series.

The Locked Room is on the shortlist for Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, and Elly Griffiths’ follow-up to The Last Remains will be the last seeing the duo work together ... or maybe not!

"The series is set in Norfolk because Dr Ruth is an archaeologist and the county is full of archaeology, with some astonishing facts, as Griffiths’ tells me:

"The oldest human footprints outside Africa were found in Happisburgh, and if you've got a forensic archaeologist as your main character, it makes sense to have them live and work in Norfolk because it's full of bones and bodies, even if some of them have been buried for thousands of years.

"It's just the perfect place for archaeologists to live, and it's a really beautiful landscape, plus it's slightly spooky and full of folklore and mythology. What could be a better location for a crime series?"

I hadn’t thought of it, but now Griffiths is pointing out these traits, I can concur; my father’s family is from Norfolk, and we spent every summer holiday visiting the likes of Kelling Heath, Cley-next-the-Sea, and Cromer. Although one of the things that I haven’t forgotten is how long it takes to get there; the county is devoid of motorways.

"Besides the long journeys, I think there's also something about being at the end of a place. You're not going through it to get somewhere else; you are going for a purpose. When people get there, they tend to stay for a very long time, hence why there is so much folk memory.

"Whenever I do book signings in Norfolk, people always tell me fantastic bits of folklore history."

The Locked Room is framed by a quotation from Julian of Norwich, and I ask Griffiths why she was inspired by her:

"I love Julian of Norwich, and she has come into a previous book, but I also wanted to make a historical analogy with the Plague. There were two big plagues in Norwich, one in the 1300s and one in the 1500s. It is thought that Julian of Norwich lived through that first plague, so I looked at Julian’s writing to see if there was anything that could show resilience and how she had come through it as the first published woman writer.

"I found it really comforting because she says we will come through it together; I found myself rereading her during COVID and writing this book."

Griffiths did agonise for quite a long time about whether to write about COVID, and she was swayed that as the fourteenth book in as many years that had covered contemporaneous events such as Brexit and Trump winning the US presidency, it would have felt wrong to miss it out.

"I thought it would be a shame, not much contemporary fiction covers Spanish flu after the First World War. Having said that, Andrew, I did think it was a very good opportunity to try and solve what was essentially a locked room mystery when the whole country was in one big locked room."

She has always enjoyed writing crime fiction, whether under her real name, Domenica de Rosa, or pseudonym, Elly Griffiths. Not all of her books at the beginning were in the crime genre, although they do have a mystery or problem to be solved. The appeal of crime is that you can go anywhere.

"Crime fiction is a broad spectrum, particularly today, with such a rich variety from domestic noir to thrillers—that's what draws me to it.

"I think people turn to crime novels for comfort because there is something very comforting about the way things are resolved.

"Same with COVID. I'm glad I wrote about the pandemic because it's done something really weird to our memory, hasn't it? It seems like years ago. When we think about the beginning, we didn't know what was going to happen because it was unknown, and I hope I have carried a little bit of that feeling into the book, but I also think it might be why people turn to crime novels because there was some sort of resolution."

So, with the spoiler alert out of the way, I wonder, why stop the series now?

"Oh, one of the great privileges of writing a series is being able to follow the lives of the main characters. I love golden age crime fiction, but sometimes those characters are not very changed by the terrible murders that they see all around them.

"I wanted to make Ruth and Nelson change because of how they were affected by not only the things that happened in their personal lives but also the things they saw in the course of their work.

"It is for me one of the most challenging but rewarding things about writing a long series.

"I didn’t have an overarching plan, but funny enough, when I was writing The Locked Room because it was set in COVID and, like for many of us, we had the course of our lives change, that's what made me realise that the next book, The Last Remains, would be the last, suddenly I could realise what was going to happen to them."

Griffiths’ output has been quite phenomenal, but she remembers her time in 2017 as Chair of Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival as a highlight of her career.

"It's just wonderful because you have an amazing committee, and as chair, it is wonderful because you can have wild ideas and people help you put them into practice. There is such a wealth of crime writing talent out there, and to think that you can invite people to come to Harrogate and meet them and hear what they have to say is great.

"It is so popular, and part of that is Harrogate itself as a beautiful place with welcoming people and the Agatha Christie link to the Swan Hotel."

As for now, Griffiths has another one of her Brighton Mysteries coming out in October and in February a new Detective Harbinder Kaur story, and when I gently ask about the future, Griffiths gives a never-say-never type of answer and hope for the fans...

"I'm going to write a new series that will be set in the East End of London, and it might involve an element of time travel. And as to Dr Ruth Galloway?

"It is the last for now, but I may just keep the door open because I'm not brave enough to say it is the last forever, but certainly for now."