Join Sunday Times bestselling author, Elly Griffiths, who will be discussing her latest thriller, The Locked Room. The fourteenth instalment in her hugely popular series sees Dr Ruth Galloway on the trail of a mystery very close to home, when an enigmatic photograph sends her to her mother’s Norfolk cottage for a visit that is unexpectedly prolonged by a lockdown.

“Galloway now seems as real as Marple and Morse.” – The Times

Venue: Witham Library, 18 Newland Street, Witham, CM8 2AQ

Date and time: Friday 10th June, 7.00pm

Tickets: £8 / £7 concessions (Students, Under 27s and Jobseekers)

Box Office: Book online or via Mercury Theatre 01206 573948 (10am – 8pm Tuesday to Saturday)

The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths

Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown?

Ruth is in London clearing out her mother’s belongings when she makes a surprising discovery: a photograph of her Norfolk cottage taken before Ruth lived there. Her mother always hated the cottage, so why does she have a picture of the place? The only clue is written on the back of the photo: Dawn, 1963.

Ruth returns to Norfolk determined to solve the mystery, but then Covid rears its ugly head. Ruth and her daughter are locked down in their cottage, attempting to continue with work and home-schooling. Happily, the house next door is rented by a nice woman called Zoe, who they become friendly with while standing on their doorsteps clapping for carers.

Nelson, meanwhile, is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links the deaths to an archaeological discovery, he breaks curfew to visit the cottage where he finds Ruth chatting to her neighbour whom he remembers as a carer who was once tried for murdering her employer.

Only then her name wasn’t Zoe. It was Dawn.

Buy a copy of The Locked Room from bookshop.org

Praise for Elly Griffiths’ novels:

‘Delightful . . . combines professional expertise with a wry sense of humour’ Sunday Times

‘Griffiths supplies proof that thrillers can increase the pulse rate while tackling more serious issues’ Guardian

‘A piquant mixture of humour, period detail… and truly beguiling characterisation’ Financial Times

‘An excellent whodunnit… terrific down-at-heal atmosphere’ The Times

‘Mixes cosiness and sharpness in a way that recalls the best of Agatha Christie’ Sunday Express

‘Enormously engaging… subtle, charming and very good’ Daily Mail

About the author

Elly Griffiths has written twenty-five books for adults and three for children. She has appeared in the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart nineteen times to date and is number eighteen on this year’s list of most borrowed authors from libraries in the UK (and one of only two authors to have two titles in the top twenty). Across all series, almost three million copies of her books have been sold (in all editions – print, ebook and audiobook).

Her series of Dr Ruth Galloway novels, featuring a forensic archaeologist, are set in Norfolk. There are thirteen books in the series including The Locked Room, to be published in February 2022.

Her Brighton-based mystery series set in the 1950s and 1960s is partly inspired by her grandfather’s life on the stage as well as the war magician Jasper Maskelyne, who claimed to have spent the war creating large scale illusions to misdirect the enemy.

In 2018 Elly wrote her first standalone novel The Stranger Diaries. The novel was a top ten paperback bestseller, selected for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club and as a summer 2019 Richard and Judy book. Her second standalone The Postscript Murders came out in hardback in autumn 2020 and debuted at number seven in the Sunday Times paperback fiction top ten in April this year.

In 2017 she was the Programming Chair of Theakston Old Peculier Crime Festival in Harrogate, the oldest and best-established crime fiction festival in the UK.

Elly also writes the A Girl Called Justice series of mystery novels for children inspired by her mother’s boarding school days; and has written four women’s fiction titles under her real name Domenica de Rosa.

Elly Griffiths lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their cat Gus.

Awards

Elly won the prestigious Edgar Award in 2020, the CWA Dagger in the Library in 2016 and the Mary Higgins Clark Award in 2011. She has been shortlisted five times for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, including 2021 and was also shortlisted for this year’s CWA Gold Dagger.

Twitter: @ellygriffiths
Instagram: @ellygriffiths17
Website: ellygriffiths.co.uk
Facebook: EllyGriffithsAuthor

Photo of Elly Griffiths © Sara Reeve