Six books in and Fiona Griffiths is still going strong. This series is one of my top finds of 2017 and every book hits the mark for me. Not a dud in the bunch. If you haven't read the first five books I hope this review sends you to them.I did a series overview here which has links to the previous books. The Deepest Grave is available from Amazon in print and Kindle.
What's It About
This time around, Fiona has been counting the days (453) since the last juicy murder when she is sent to a crime scene. This one is particularly juicy by Fiona standards. An archeologist, Gaynor Charteris, has been found murdered in a very brutal manner, decapitated with a replica Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon style sword, her head left sitting on a bureau with the eyes pointed to a framed Latin text in medieval script. If decapitation by sword isn't unusual enough, the three spears stuck in the body gives this crime scene all the characteristics of a gory ritual. Probably a local nutter is the opinion of the DI in charge, Bleddyn Jones. Fiona being Fiona doesn't take that as the obvious starting point and finds a similar case, albeit one several centuries old. She enlists the expert assistance of PhD student Katie Smith who was working under Prof Charteris on a dig at the site of an Iron Age hill fort where some artifacts were stolen around the time of the murder. And Fiona is off on her investigation to connect the Dark Ages and the present.
Why I Like It
As with previous books in the series, this is a first person narrative so you are only seeing events from Fiona's perspective. I know this isn't a popular favorite voice for many readers but it is mine and necessary to get the full effect of Fiona's wry observations and some self-mocking as she tries to adjust to society's expectations. While we do see things through Fiona's eyes, she doesn't reveal everything she is thinking and when we find out what she has planned to flush out the killer it really is pretty cool.
Bingham has an amazing ability to take technical and complicated issues and weave them into a story without making it read like a copy-and-paste job from Wikipedia. I don't think there is a book in the series where I haven't leaned something. Being a retired academic librarian, I found The Deepest Grave particularly interesting. In addition to good police procedural work and outstanding and thrilling action, you get a good look at how historical research is conducted and, I think, some very funny scenes with an archivist. One of the things I learned in this book actually popped up in an article I read later and I had a nice "hey, I know what that means" moment. Don't let any of this scare you away, I promise you, the story is anything but dry.
The first book in the series, Talking to the Dead, tells us what makes Fiona different. She is able to see connections, relationships, possibilities, and threads not obvious to her fellow coppers. Fiona's habit of launching her own investigation along apparently random if not irrelevant lines is a source of conflict with her superiors. In The Deepest Grave she finds herself working under DI Bleddyn Jones when her boss Dennis Jackson takes off for some personal time. I like the way Bingham handles this. Jones isn't portrayed as incompetent but someone more comfortable using traditional methods of investigation. He doesn't get Fiona despite Jackson suggesting that she needs to be given a loose leash to pursue her tangential investigations.
A bonus for me and I hope other readers in the Author's Note at the end. Bingham put answers the challenge as to the the story's historical accuracy and whether the series can meet the challenge of being realistic as a detective story. The author answers both very well. With regard to the latter, Bingham puts the series in the context of the Chandlerian and Holmsian approaches to detective fiction. I personally like both schools of writing and enjoyed the author's look at both and where the Fiona Griffith's series fits. Read the books and tell me if you agree.
No comments:
Post a Comment