The Woman In Blue: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 8

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Reader favorite, druid priest Cathbad, is cat sitting in Little Walsingham. It is a religious place for many people. He doesn't think too much of it when he sees a mysterious lady in white with a blue cape walking the cemetery in the late hours of the evening; maybe he was one of the fortunate to capture a glimpse of the Virgin Mary. However, a woman's body is discovered the next morning and Cathbad may be the last person to see her alive. DCI Harry Nelson, Clough, and Tim are all on the scene trying to piece together what happened to the woman in blue who just so happens to be a high profile young model. A young model who happens to be a patient at the local rehab facility. Media attention means the Superintendent's attention and the killer must be found.

From the darkness, an arm pulls you into a small shop. As your eyes adjust, you see a pale woman in sharp clothes gesturing towards a wall of potions. Rich in atmosphere and history and blessed by [Griffith's] continuing development of brilliant, feisty, independent Ruth...A Room Full of Bones, like its predecessors, works its magic on the reader's imagination." -- Richmond Times-Dispatch Art historian Ellen McBreen ponders the role of Henri Matisse’s muse, model, and collaborator, Lydia Delectorskaya, in this iconic paintingThis is book #8 in the Ruth Galloway series and life in and near Norfolk continues. In the beginning of this novel, Cathbad is house-sitting and cat-sitting at a friend'a cottage in Walsingham. Cathbad is chasing after the cat as it manages to slip out an open window, when Cathbad notices a beautiful young woman in blue in the graveyard next to the cottage. Who is she and what is she doing out late at night or is this one of Cathbad's visions and the woman is a sighting of the Virgin Mary which Walsingham is known for with its religious pilgrims.

I had many suspicions about some people from the start and it was fun to read and find out when I’d guesses right/wrong. There were lots of red herrings but all of them made sense. I’d thought of the culprit (s) at different points but I love when I can’t guess correctly and this was one time when I was stymied. I read these books for the characters and the relationships and the settings, but this mystery was complex and complicated, and believable, and I thought it was a great part of the book. I found particularly sad both of the murders in this book.Harry Nelson, who has a rather shaky history with Ruth, is in charge of the Serious Crimes Unit and takes charge of the case. He and his team set out to learn whether the murders are connected - and if so, how - and catch the killer before he (or she) kills again.

As always, the characters are more important than the murder mystery itself. We get a few revelations in this story, both happy and sad.This is my favorite mystery series right now. The protagonist is Ruth Galloway, a professor of archaeology, in Norfolk England. She gets involved in police investigations when bones are found and need to be dated. Are they from the 1300's or 2016? This is not a problem in CA, so I find it completely fascinating. She has a young daughter, Kate, and a good friend, Cathbad, who is a druid.

The major problem is that there is a limit to how many police investigations credibly require help from an archaeologist. In this one, Griffiths makes no real attempt to bring Ruth in officially. Instead, one of the women priests attending the conference just happens to be an old friend of Ruth's so, when she starts receiving threatening letters, of course she takes them to Ruth. Well, if you were being threatened, of course you'd go to an archaeologist you knew vaguely from University decades ago rather than to the police, wouldn't you? You wouldn't? No, neither would I. Fernand Léger, La Femme en Bleu (Woman in Blue), 1912, oil on canvas, 76 x 51 1/8 inches, 193 x 129.9 cm, Kunstmuseum, Basel. Reading Elly Griffiths is like sitting down for a wine and chat with your best friend. She has a direct no nonsense style to her writing, but still manages to inject loads of atmosphere and detail. A woman’s body has been found strangled outside the village of Walsingham. DCI Harry Nelson’s friend Cathbad, a druid and mystic catsitting at a nearby cottage, saw the woman, dressed in blue and white and reminiscent of the Virgin Mary, standing in the cemetery earlier that night. It turns out that Chloe Jenkins, a resident of The Sanctuary, where she was being treated for drug addiction, had been scrubbing clean the grave of a woman who had once been her minder and foster mother to a large number of children. Nelson’s fling with archaeologist Ruth Galloway, a police consultant, produced a child he spends time with despite remaining married to his stunning wife, Michelle. Ruth becomes involved in the current case when a university friend, Hilary Smithson, asks to meet her at Walsingham, where she’ll be attending a conference. Hilary, a priest, has been getting letters railing against women in the clergy, the last with a distinctly sinister tone. As Nelson searches for clues to the murder, he learns that Michelle’s been seeing one of his sergeants. He himself is still a little in love with Ruth, who tries not to admit to herself that she loves him. When Michelle barely escapes death at the hands of the strangler and one of the other female priests is strangled, it’s hard not to notice that all the victims were attractive blue-eyed blondes. Since religion seems to play a role in the murders, Ruth wonders if a part of a missing, broken vial that supposedly contained breast milk from the Virgin Mary is the key to the case. This painting was reproduced (published) 10 October 1912, in Claude-Roger, "Au Salon d'Automne, Maîtres Cubes", in Comoedia Illustré, La Comédie Artistique, October 1912, p. 62. See here too: "Au Salon d'Automne, Maîtres Cubes", in Comoedia Illustré

Dutch Scenes of Domestic Interiors

And yet, as Matisse would insist, his models were never just props. The emotional intensity of their encounter, he explained, was distributed onto the whole of his canvas, and in the invention of “plastic signs [that] probably express their souls.” Woman in Blue could be said to narrate that process of sublimation. Ten photographs recording its development reveal transformations made to the initially naturalistic pose of Delectorskaya leaning against the arm of a settee. Ruth Galloway's] an uncommon, down-to-earth heroine whose acute insight, wry humor, and depth of feeling make her a thoroughly engaging companion." -- Erin Hart, Agatha and Anthony Award nominated author of Haunted Ground and Lake of Sorrows The dress was specially designed - Mordaunt had revealed before the ceremony that she'd declined wearing traditional court dress worn by the men before her. She told the Times earlier in the week: "What my predecessor would have worn is the old court dress, which the whole front of the tunic is embroidered with heavy gold.