"A Dying Fall"

Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway novels have been praised as “highly atmospheric” (New York Times Book Review), “remarkable” (Richmond Times-Dispatch), and “gripping” (Louise Penny).

Griffiths applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, A Dying Fall, and reported the following:

‘As they turn off the A59 the world changes.’ This sentence, halfway down p69 of A Dying Fall, pretty much sums up how I feel about the book. After four books set in Norfolk, in this one I take my heroine, Dr Ruth Galloway, on holiday. Well, not exactly a holiday. In the first chapter Ruth is shocked to discover that her old friend Dan Golding, who is teaching at a university in the north of England, has died in a fire. Then she receives a letter from Dan, sent just before he died. Dan tells Ruth that he has a made an archaeological discovery which will ‘change everything.’ But Dan also says that he is scared. Is someone prepared to kill to keep Dan’s discovery a secret? Ruth travels to Lancashire to investigate.

It’s a risk to take your characters away from their familiar location. I love Norfolk – so does Ruth – and I know readers have enjoyed the descriptions of the bleak and beautiful landscape. Yet it just felt like time for a change. On page 69, as Ruth follows the road that ‘snakes slowly upwards’ I felt that I was reaching new, more invigorating, ground. In the distance Ruth sees a vast hill, wreathed in clouds. This is Pendle Hill, the scene of many strange events, including a seventeenth century witch trial and a vision of God’s love. In this book Ruth encounters the Pendle witches, modern-day Neo-Nazis and - scariest of all – Nelson’s mother. I hope that readers will enjoy the journey.

Learn more about the book and author at Elly Griffiths's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Crossing Places.

My Book, The Movie: The House at Sea’s End.

The Page 69 Test: A Room Full of Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue