The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths

Blurb

In the next Ruth Galloway mystery, a vision of the Virgin Mary foreshadows a string of cold-blooded murders, revealing a dark current of religious fanaticism in an old medieval town.

Known as England’s Nazareth, the medieval town of Little Walsingham is famous for religious apparitions. So when Ruth Galloway’s druid friend Cathbad sees a woman in a white dress and a dark blue cloak standing alone in the local cemetery one night, he takes her as a vision of the Virgin Mary. But then a woman wrapped in blue cloth is found dead the next day, and Ruth’s old friend Hilary, an Anglican priest, receives a series of hateful, threatening letters. Could these crimes be connected? When one of Hilary’s fellow female priests is murdered just before Little Walsingham’s annual Good Friday Passion Play, Ruth, Cathbad, and DCI Harry Nelson must team up to find the killer before he strikes again.

Review

I love a Dr Ruth Galloway book and have now only one left to read from the series. Thankfully, this book did not disappoint and as usual I could not put this book down. 

I’ve always loved Tudor history and I have seen so many references to pilgrimages to Walsingham so it was really fun to read a modern day book set around this place which has always been such a special place. There wasn’t really the archaeological link that most of the books from the series have but Griffiths came up with a very clever reason for Ruth being involved in these murder investigations and of course helping Nelson. 

The shrines to the Virgin Mary at Walsingham are not the ideal place for Ruth who is an atheist and really not comfortable with anything Christian based due to her upbringing but because of an old university friend Ruth ends up in Walsingham quite a lot. 

Hilary is Ruth’s old friend and she is receiving some rather nasty letters because she is a female priest. Due to Ruth’s past working with the police, Hilary decides to ask Ruth for advice but the situation soon escalates from threatening letters when one of Hilary’s fellow female priests is murdered. I really liked Hilary and it was nice to meet one of Ruth’s friends from her past. I like it when we meet Ruth’s friends from her past because it is quite clear that Ruth is not great at keeping in contact with people but I also love seeing how surprised she is when these people have changed. It makes me wonder whether Ruth thinks that she hasn’t changed at all and so always feels surprised when she sees others have. Ruth obviously has changed because we see it happening through the series. 

There was one big inaccuracy in the book which annoyed me slightly. Ruth and Hilary are at the shrines where the monks used to live and they are judging the monks because of all the oyster shells you can see in the garden. Considering Ruth is an archaeologist and Hilary is also a trained archaeologist surely they know that in the monks’ time oysters were a poor man’s food. Yes, there was a lot of money in the church and some monks did live rather well but you can’t judge them for living well and privileged lives on the basis of oyster shells. 

I was pleased that my favourite Cathbad was in this book more as I missed him in the previous book. He is such a good character who always brings a smile to my face. 

I flew through this book and give it a big 5 out of 5 Dragons. 

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About the author

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway novels take for their inspiration Elly’s husband, who gave up a city job to train as an archaeologist, and her aunt who lives on the Norfolk coast and who filled her niece’s head with the myths and legends of that area. Elly has two children and lives near Brighton. 

Etsy

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