Tag: Ali Dawson

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

Published on by Margaret8 Comments

Quercus/ 13 February 2025/ 354 pages/review copy/e-book |Review copy| 5*

The Frozen People is the first in a new series, the Ali Dawson Mysteries, by Elly Griffiths. It’s not like her other books, but it’s still a murder mystery. Ali is fifty, a Detective Sergeant in a cold case team that investigates crimes in a unique way – by travelling back in time, physically, to do their research and interview the witnesses. You do need to suspend your disbelief but that wasn’t hard for me to do, as Elly Griffiths is an excellent storyteller.

I can’t say I understood how Serafina Jones, a physicist has developed a way of moving atoms in space. There are no concrete details about how it’s achieved and it’s all a bit vague. Jones explains it by saying it’s as if you create a space and then fill it with that exact person. The team calls it ‘going through the gate’. No matter, I never understood how Captain James T Kirk and his crew travelled through time and space in Star Trek, but I still loved it. And just as in Star Trek, Ali and her team are instructed not to interfere with historical events, and are required to maintain the timeline, to prevent history from being altered.

Ali and her colleague, Dina, have made a few trips back in time to collect evidence, but for their current case Ali has to go back in time further than she has gone before – to 1850, to the time and place when Ettie Moran, an artist’s model was murdered. She was found in a building used by artists owned by Cain Templeton, an influential man, who was a suspect, although he was never charged with the murder. He was part of a club called The Collectors. To be a member you had to have killed a woman. Cain’s great great grandson, Isaac, the MP Finn works, for is the Secretary of State for Justice and he wants to clear Cain’s name. So, Ali is assigned to the case. So far, so good. But it all starts to go wrong when Ali finds that she can’t get back to the present day it’s her biggest fear. She is stuck in 1850!

I was quickly drawn into this absorbing story. It’s a combination of two genres I love, crime fiction and historical fiction. The main characters come over as real people, the historical facts and the setting are detailed and convincing. And the plot held me captivated throughout.

I’m looking forward to reading more Ali Dawson books in the future.

Many thanks to the publishers for a review copy via NetGalley.

WWW Wednesday: 5 February 2025

Published on by Margaret16 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently I’m reading Only Murders in the Abbey by Beth Cowan-Erskine.

This is the second Loch Down Abbey Mystery, to be published on 13 February. Set in 1930’s Scotland the story revolves around Loch Down Abbey which has now been turned into a hotel. The Abbey is full of guests for a Highland Ball, including several uninvited members of the Inverkillen family, the Abbey’s former owners. Housekeeper Mrs MacBain thinks her biggest challenge will be finding suitable rooms for everyone and keeping the peace at cocktail hour. Until the morning after the ball, when one of the guests is discovered inside the Abbey’s library – as dead as a doornail.

The last book I read was The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

This is the first in a new series – an Ali Dawson Mystery to be published on 13 February. I loved it. It’s the first in a new series. It’s not like her other books, but it’s still a murder mystery. You do need to suspend your disbelief because she heads a cold case team who investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen – or so their inside joke goes. Most people don’t know that they travel back in time to complete their research.

I do hope there are more Ali Dawson books in the pipeline. The way this one ends it looks as though there will be at least one more.

What will I read next? I’m not sure. At the moment I think it won’t be crime fiction as I fancy a change.

So it might be Greek Lessons by Han Kang, the winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, a new-to-me author. This is a new translation by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won, of the 2011 novel that explores how a teacher losing his sight and a pupil losing her voice form a poetic bond. It is a short book, of just 149 pages narrated by the two unnamed characters, one a woman grieving for her mother and her son, now in the custody of her ex-husband. She is also experiencing the loss of her ability to speak. The other is a man losing his connection to place and family, as well as the loss of his eyesight.  They meet when the woman attends his Ancient Greek lessons.

Or it could be something else.

WWW Wednesday: 8 January 2025

Published on by Margaret5 Comments

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently I’m reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, annotated by David M. Shapard. Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors and I’ve read all of her novels, beginning with Pride and Prejudice, which I’ve reread over the years many times, and watched TV and film adaptations. This year is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, so this is an ideal time to reread some of her books and I’m joining Brona at This Reading Life in her Austen 2025 project to reread her books, along with the Classics Club’s Sync Read (or readalong).

I first read Sense and Sensibility when I was at school but have never reread it. It’s about the three Dashwood sisters and their widowed mother as they leave their family estate at Norland Park after their father’s death when their half-brother John inherited the estate.

The last book I read was There’s a Reason for Everything by E R Punshon, the 21st in the Bobby Owen mystery series, first published in September 1945. Bobby Owen had recently been promoted from Inspector to the Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire. I enjoyed this complicated novel with murders, a missing painting allegedly by Vermeer, dodgy fine art dealers and an abandoned country mansion, Nonpareil, once the home of the Tallebois family, and known as a haunted house.

What will I read next? I’m not sure, there are so many I want to read. It will probably be The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths as I have a NetGalley proof copy and the book is due to be published on the 13th of February. It’s the first in a new series – An Ali Dawson.

Description on Amazon:

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen – or so their inside joke goes. Most people don’t know that they travel back in time to complete their research.

The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton. Rumour has it that Cain was part of a sinister group called The Collectors; to become a member, you had to kill a woman…

Fearing for her safety in the middle of a freezing Victorian winter, Ali finds herself stuck in time, unable to make her way back to her life, her beloved colleagues, and her son, Finn, who suddenly finds himself in legal trouble in the present day. Could the two cases be connected?

Or it could be something else.