Ruth's First Christmas Tree: A Ruth Galloway Christmas Story (Ruth Galloway Series)

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All our trees are grown in sustainable forests,’ says Leaf. ‘Rainbow and I talk to them every day. They’re our friends. ’ He adds, rather more briskly, ‘That one’s twenty-five quid.’ Ruth looks at the tree. She can’t really see anything special about it – it’s green and pointy and spiky, that’s about it. She needs a tree. She has promised herself that she will make this the perfect Christmas for Kate. It’s Kate’s second Christmas. She didn’t really register the first one, being only a month old at the time but now she can recognize Santa Claus at a hundred paces and yesterday said ‘present’, very loudly and clearly. So she is on her way to becoming a typical product of the consumerist society. Well done, Ruth. A triumph for modern parenting. But this Christmas it won’t just be Ruth and Kate, because Ruth has also invited Max, her . . . What is Max? Her boyfriend? Surely it’s ridiculous to have a boyfriend at forty-one? Her partner? Sounds too official for a relationship that has, so far, encompassed two weekends and an Aborigine repatriation ceremony. Anyway, she doesn’t need a partner. She has Kate and her beloved cat, Flint. She has her job as a forensic archaeologist, her friends and a somewhat stressful relationship with Kate’s father, DCI Harry Nelson. She’s happy as she is. But why then is she going to so much trouble to do all the Christmassy things when usually her only concession to the festive season is watching the Dr Who special with a glass of white? This year she has put up her cards, bought an advent calendar and even arranged holly behind her picture frames. She has also bought a turkey (M & S, pre-stuffed), mince pies (ditto containing brandy and grated nutmeg) and a ton of sprouts. And now she is standing in the freezing cold debating the finer points of a Christmas tree. ‘I’ll take it,’ she says in answer to Leaf’s raised eyebrows. ‘Is it OK to collect it later? I’ve got some shopping to do.’ ‘Time has no meaning,’ replies Leaf, adding that he shuts at five. Ruth’s old friend Dan Golding dies in a house fire. But before he died Dan wrote to Ruth telling her that he had made a ground-breaking archaeological discovery. Could this find be linked to his death and who are the sinister neo-Nazi group who were th … Book one in the series starts as it means to go on, with bones unearthed at the edge of a North Norfolk salt marsh. Are they recent or ancient? DCI Harry Nelson is desperate to know if they belong to a young girl who went missing 10 years ago, and he calls upon the expertise of Dr Ruth Galloway, an academic whose speciality is forensic archeology. Thus begins the relationship between the pair. It is a faltering start, with Ruth and Nelson coming at life from two very different angles – he a bluff northern family man, she a solitary and bookish type who lives in a tiny cottage out on the marshes. But their work is about to draw them inextricably closer. Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich’s web of underground tunnels. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity – now it suggests …

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In this highly atmospheric mystery, Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson investigate a murder in a medieval Italian town where dark secrets are buried as deep as bones. DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to ‘go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there’. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle’s baby due to be born, but because a … After that, the day goes downhill somewhat. Ruth rings her mother to be told how sad it is that she’s not coming home for Christmas. ‘Simon, Cathy and the boys have just arrived. They’re asking for their Auntie Ruth.’ Ruth doubts this, her nephews have reached the stage when they are permanently attached to wires and communicate only in grunts. ‘I’ll ring on Christmas Day,’ she says. ‘I’m going to a party tonight.’ ‘Oh.’ She knows this will intrigue her mother. ‘Are you going with Max?’ ‘No, he’s arriving tomorrow.’ ‘That’s nice.’ Her mother has met Max and, to Ruth’s disappointment, rather approves. ‘You must bring him for Sunday lunch one day.’ ‘I will.’ ‘Daddy’s longing to meet him. We’re both praying for you, Ruth.’ Significant pause. ‘I know. Thank you.’ I discovered Ruth with the first French translation LES DISPARUES DU MARAIS (The Crossing Places) and then read, reread (& again) the whole series. It’s a perfect blend : beautiful writing, sense of place, touches of humour, and of course, the characters… She must get a tree, shop for food, clean the house, buy presents, including one for her new boyfriend—who she isn’t even sure is her boyfriend—and remember to get the turkey out of the freezer.

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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. The tenth book in the Dr Ruth Galloway series sees Ruth wanting to escape from Norfolk and from her complicated relationship with DCI Nelson, at least for a while. Her chance arrives with an invitation from Dr Angelo Morelli at Rome University. Morell … A remark which, like many of Shona’s comments, combines to make Ruth feel both childlike and stupid. She hasn’t been hiding, she is simply chatting with a workmate, and it was Shona who ignored her in the first place. Still, she knows that there’s no point in saying any of this. ‘Hi Shona. You look great.’ ‘Thanks. I feel like a whale. A great big golden whale. Did you feel like this in the last months?’ I feel like that all the time, Ruth wants to tell her. Instead she says, brightly, ‘Not long now. Are you all prepared?’ ‘Almost. Do you want to see the baby’s room?’ Before Ruth can answer, Shona has dragged her away without a word to Bob. Ruth mouths ‘’Bye’ over her shoulder. The hallway and the stairs are now full of people. Ruth sees Liam, Shona’s ex-lover, as well as Freya, a druid friend of Cathbad’s, and several graduate students. For a lunatic moment, she almost thinks that she sees Erik, though he has been dead almost two years. But it’s just another man with long grey hair and a faintly piratical expression. Shona weaves her way through the crowd, kissing cheeks and pressing hands. Ruth plods in her wake, nodding and smiling at people she knows. Surely she can go home soon. Shona opens the door on a little room at the top of the stairs. ‘We were going to use the spare room but Phil needs that for his office. Anyway, this is plenty big enough for a baby. What do you think?’ ‘Babies have a way of spreading,’ says Ruth, but she has to admit that the room is beautiful, pale yellow with a frieze of sun, moon and stars. A mobile of glittering birds hangs from the ceiling. ‘It’s lovely,’ says Ruth. ‘Perfect for a boy or a girl.’

Ruth Galloway Series by Elly Griffiths - Goodreads Ruth Galloway Series by Elly Griffiths - Goodreads

Ruth s First Christmas Tree A Christmas story by Elly Griffiths 22 December The spirits are strong in this one, says... Elly Griffiths was born in London in 1963. Her first crime novel The Crossing Places is set on the Norfolk coast where she spent holidays as a child and where her aunt still lives. Her interest in archaeology comes from her husband, Andrew, who gave up his city job to retrain as an archaeologist. She lives in Brighton, on the south coast of England, with her husband and two children. There’s nothing Ruth Galloway hates more than amateur archaeologists, but when a group of them stumble upon Bronze Age artifacts alongside a dead body, she finds herself thrust into their midst -- and into the crosshairs of a string of murders circ... Until her daughter was born, forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway didn’t do Christmas, but now that Kate is a year old, she wants it to be special.Isn’t that one of Santa’s reindeer?’ says Ruth, rescuing Flint, who has become entangled in the tinsel. She helps Kate twine the sparkly thread through the branches. ‘Yes,’ Cathbad grins. ‘Dasher and Dancer, Donner and Blitzen. It’s all linked. Anyway, when Saint Boniface came to convert the German tribes, he chopped down the Donar Oak. When he wasn’t killed by a thunderbolt, they all converted to Christianity.’ ‘What a shame,’ says Ruth, who has taken a dislike to the show-off saint. ‘He sounds as if a bolt of lightning would have done him the power of good.’ ‘There’s a Christian link too,’ says Cathbad. ‘The evergreen tree symbolizes eternal life. In medieval times it was sometimes called the Paradise Tree.’ He holds up a decoration in the form of an apple. ‘The apples are meant to remind you of the Garden of Eden.’ ‘They just remind me of apples,’ says Ruth. She has little patience with Christian symbolism. ‘Trees are important to druids too, aren’t they?’ She is thinking of Leaf and Raindrop. Despite everything, she hopes the police don’t catch up with them. ‘Yes. The word druid comes from a Celtic word meaning “knowing the oak tree”. It survives in Irish place names like Derry and Kildare. Kildare means “church of oak”.’ Ruth knows that Cathbad was brought up in Ireland, otherwise his past is as mysterious as the origin of the Christmas tree. They met nearly thirteen years ago when Ruth was excavating a wooden henge found on the beach at the Saltmarsh. Cathbad and his fellow druids were protesting about the removal of the timbers. They were meant for the open air, they said, for the wind and the rain, part of the ebb and flow of the tide. But the authorities had prevailed and the remains of the henge are kept in controlled conditions inside a Norfolk museum. Looking at Cathbad now as he carefully sorts through the baubles, Ruth feels a surge of affection for him. They have been through a lot together, one way or another. ‘Of course,’ he is saying, ‘trees are important in all religions. Christ was killed by being hung on a tree. And Odin sacrificed himself on the world tree.’ Everything has changed for Dr Ruth Galloway. She has a new job, home and partner, and is no longer North Norfolk police’s resident forensic archaeologist. That is, until convicted murderer Ivor March offers to make DCI Nelson a deal. Nelson was always …