Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Totenpfad by Elly Griffiths

13 reviews

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

TITLE—The Crossing Places

AUTHOR—Elly Griffiths

PUBLISHED—2009

PUBLISHER—Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

GENRE—mystery crime thriller

SETTING—Norfolk, England

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—archaeology, New Age stuff, ancient henge sites, ley lines, birding, salt marsh, boundaries & liminal places, human sacrifice & ritual burials, bog bodies, horrible human relationship dynamics, cats, university jobs, child abduction & murder, modern English society & culture (though a bit dated even for 2009 imo…)

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️

CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️

STORY/PLOT—⭐️

PHILOSOPHY—🚩🚩🚩

My thoughts:

Oh gods this book was a mess. Though I’m not too familiar with the genre (crime/mystery/thriller), I thought the plot seemed way too cliché and predictable (I’m terrible at guessing whodunnits and this one I guessed *immediately*), the characters’ actions made zero sense to the point that it was disorienting, and the underlying philosophy was awful.

—👇🏻HERE BE SPOILERS👇🏻—

This book presented New Agers as mad kooks, and born again Christians as fanatical (but at least nOt As BaD as New Agers 😬). The (“fat”, single-with-two-cats, living-in-an-isolated-cottage) MC—who referred to her body at one point as “a waste” because she had never had children—was “redeemed” at the end by becoming pregnant by the married man she slept with halfway through the book. 🥴 Her odd obsession with her toxic, abusive, cheating mentor was extremely lazily justified at the end because pEoPlE aRe CoMpLiCaTeD and nO bOdY iS pErFeCt even though the dude literally died while chasing her out into the marsh during a storm and the MC was convinced he was the killer at one point. One of the characters got back together with his wife even though he was neither happy nor in love with her and it was *uncritically* presented as the right thing to do. And the person who ended up being the killer was neurodivergent and basically presented as having done what he did due to mental instability. Yeah. This book was a WHOLE mess.

I read this book as part of #ArchaeoBookclub and the archaeology in the book was, though somewhat accurately depicted (i.e. the author clearly did her research), disappointingly applied fixating on death rituals (which is an over-sensationalized part of archaeological scholarship) and, even worse, human sacrifice (a highly controversial and debatable interpretation of some ancient burials). It just came off as very lazy and many times the things the author did get wrong (how artifacts were often incorrectly excavated & recorded, the fact that the use of honeysuckle rope in one of the modern burials wasn’t an immediate indicator of who the killer was, and the archaeologist musing about the monetary value of one of the artifacts as her first thought upon uncovering it) too often took me out of the story.

—🛑END OF SPOILERS🛑—

I would not recommend this book.

Final note: Still glad I read it though (and that I was able to get it from the library) just so I know what’s out there. 👀 And I also want to emphasize that I firmly believe that just because a book is a piece of “genre fiction” or is meant as “just” escapism and entertainment, that doesn’t mean that it’s ok to uncritically feature highly problematic ideas and beliefs.

⭐️

(This proves at least that I don’t only give books four and five star ratings. 😆 Fwiw I will only really post one or two star reviews if I feel like the book was problematic on some level and needs to be addressed.)

Season: Winter

CW // fatphobia, animal death (cat), child abduction & murder, infidelity, misogyny, toxic relationships, ableism (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

• LAST RITUALS by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir—this was another book from this genre that I read because of its connections to archaeology and certain historical subjects that I’m interested in and that was similarly disappointing in its handling of those topics, though maybe not as much as Griffiths’ book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Infidelity, Child death, Ableism, Animal death, Fatphobia, Kidnapping, Body shaming, Murder, and Toxic relationship

leneliest's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping

Moderate: Child death and Murder

Minor: Abortion

zelephante's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Grief, and Animal death

Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Child death, and Fatphobia

Minor: Abortion, Infidelity, Sexual content, Sexism, Murder, Pregnancy, and Infertility

zosiablue's review against another edition

funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Ahh what a satisfying cozy mystery. Just what I needed. Light murder/kidnapping, heavy archeological bent, a little romance but not enough to annoy, and a spooky-ass saltmarsh. I'm so glad there's like 15 more books in this series. Though not without fault - there was some unsavory animal violence & anti-fat bias (though only the main character referring to herself). But I'm ready to read 15 more stories about archaeologist Ruth Galloway and her cats. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Kidnapping, Animal death, Confinement, and Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Violence, Murder, Infidelity, and Dysphoria

Minor: Sexual assault and Pregnancy

swaanderer's review against another edition

Fat-shaming,

pov of kidnapped child

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping

Moderate: Fatphobia and Murder

samsearle's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Violence, Kidnapping, Animal death, Fatphobia, and Murder

kellyallenpoe's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Body shaming

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, and Murder

asourceoffiction's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I think I'll be very interested to read the whole Ruth Galloway series. This first book is a great, well written thriller. I love the archaeology side of the story and Galloway and Nelson are a great pair of characters to follow.

The setting is so desolate and beautiful, I loved every scene on the Saltmarsh. The way Ruth is drawn to it no matter how lonely or eerie it feels says a lot about how complex a character she is.

There are a lot of red herrings thrown around throughout the plot, designed to add suspicion to everyone. But unfortunately I guessed the ending pretty early on and didn't really waver in my verdict. But it doesn't happen often and it didn't take much away from the book! There were also a few touches I didn't predict to keep me guessing right to the end, and I love some of the little set ups that are in place for the next book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Child death, Child abuse, Confinement, and Murder

Moderate: Police brutality

emlo's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I found this book drew me in, especially the descriptions of the saltmarsh. The weather was a character in it's own right. I liked the fact that the characters are all complicated people and not just one note. I look forward to getting to know the main characters better in the rest of the series. There was quite a lot of time spent going on about how fat Ruth was - at a whooping 12.5 st (rolls eyes), please, enough with the body shaming. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Kidnapping, and Animal death

Moderate: Child abuse

Minor: Abortion and Fatphobia

emilyexley's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Murder, Child death, and Animal death