Great next book in series

This is a good installment in Ruth Galloway series. Fans should enjoy story but change in narrator is quite disconcerting after consistency of previous titles. Once I got used to the change it was fine though. Clare read well and managed all the different accents and voices beautifully. I think if you haven't read any books in this series before, I'd recommend going back and finding an earlier book in this series to start with as much of the relationships in this book assume prior knowledge.

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Not my favourite in the series

Number 5 in the Ruth Galloway series and still loving it. I wouldn’t say this one is my favourite yet though, for a couple of reasons.

I’ve been listening to these on Audible as I drive to and from work, and A Dying Fall had a different narrator than the other books in the series. This one Clare Corbett, the others Jane McDowell. I must say I really missed McDowell’s work. Corbett’s voices for the men was very distracting, and not in a good way.

The story starts with the death of one of Ruth’s university friends. Before he died, Dan, also an archaeologist who lives and works near Blackpool, had discovered some bones he believed to be those of King Arthur. Dan’s boss asks Ruth if she would look at the bones and offer her expert opinion. Ruth accepts, deciding she’ll use the time in Blackpool as a holiday for her and her daughter, Kate.

When Ruth arrives, she finds that Dan’s death was not an accident, but murder. In the normal way for such books, there’s a plethora of likely suspects and, of course, one of them is sending threatening texts to Ruth, meaning she and Kate are in danger.

Her knight in shining armour, Nelson, has meanwhile been forced to have a holiday and he’s chosen to return to his hometown of Blackpool to visit his mother and mother-in-law. Thus Griffiths has lots of opportunities for Ruth and Nelson to run into each other…

Griffiths takes up those opportunities, to a point. In fact, on the face of it, Ruth and Nelson are behaving appropriately and are simply trying to protect Kate and solve the crime. However, if I was Nelson’s wife, I would definitely not trust the crime solving duo are far as I could kick them.

The main crime was very different to the others in the series and yet it still cleverly incorporated Ruth’s knowledge of bones. I’ve had a whinge about Griffiths' writing in the reviews of the other books but, I must say, I think she’s become much stronger in this regard. She has stopped her annoying word repetition and having the characters think the same thing over and over (although, ugh, Ruth still thinks about Erik which drives me nuts). The only major gripe I would have is that the guilty party's reveal at the end included a bit of an information dump surrounding their crime plot.

My favourite supporting characters still feature, especially Cathbad at his stellar best (although, as I said earlier, Corbett’s way of interpreting his voice wasn’t the best). Griffiths introduces a few others I wouldn’t mind getting to know more in future books (Nelson’s mother and his reaction to her was a hoot!).

Kate is becoming such a cute character also. I’m sure Griffiths has her own children. From sleep deprivation to Dora backpacks, she writes the scenes featuring Ruth’s thoughts about motherhood perfectly.

As Ruth and Nelson are both on vacation, we get a different setting this time. I have zero knowledge of the Blackpool region but it sounds quite fun (except for the crazies featured in this book who apparently live there). After four books of Griffiths describing Norfolk and the salt marsh where Ruth resides, I thought this too, was quite a clever move.

I wouldn't recommend reading this book without reading the previous ones in the series. Not that readers wouldn’t follow the plot, but I just think the nuances of the Ruth/Nelson relationship, and the relationship Cathbad has with them both, would not have the same impact on those with no background knowledge.

As usual, Griffiths gives us a bit of a cliffhanger when it comes to Ruth and Nelson at the end of the book. I didn’t think this one was as startling as the other books in the series. I still enjoyed it but let’s just say I smiled wistfully instead of gasping aloud this time.

Actually that would be a good way to describe my overall feelings for this book: it made me smile wistfully instead of gasping aloud. It will still be a favourite as it's part of what has become one of my favourite series but it isn't my favourite of the series thus far (say that three times without getting tongue twisted).

5 out of 5

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Change of narrator was jarring in parts

Cathbad narration was dreadful. Kate’s squealing was grating. Nelson’s character changed due to narration.
Sorry to the narrator, otherwise it was fine,
Story was great.

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Another great read by Elly Griffiths

Enjoyed this continuation of the series but as most others have mentioned Clare Corbett's narration took quite some getting used to after listening to Jane McDowell for the previous books. While I have enjoyed listening to Clare narrate other books I don't think she handles the male characters in this series anywhere near as well as Jane... in fact quite uncomfortably overall. The story felt a little less 'tight' in parts than most of the previous books but successfully wove a continuation of the main characters' storylines. And I'm off to order the next in the series!

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Reviews on Narrator Unfair

I am unsure why Audible published 3 negative reviews about the Narrator Clare Corbett at the beginning of the Review Section. I nearly gave up on reading the Ruth Galloway series after seeing these negative and very subjective reviews.
It is true that Clare Corbett has a different narration style from Jane McDowell, but both are excellent narrators. Clare uses different tones of voice for the male characters and the young child, which though not exact in tone are very helpful when discriminating between the different characters.
I am looking forward to the next book in the series read by one of those excellent narrators. May I suggest to the few detractors that they either give up on listening to books, or develop an understanding of how many skills it takes to become a narrator.

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Performance

I really enjoy Ellie Griffiths novels. This one was perhaps a little bit flaky on the plot, but what was distracting was the voice performance, there were times when the voice adopted was irritating and not very believable when the different characters played.

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Why Posh English narrators for this series??!

i confess to having a general dislike of posh English narrators but wanted to try this series. i picked the Clare Corbett over Jane McDowell because she sounded marginally less plummy (and i had actually enjoyed her reading of The Widow).

But the whole performance fell apart for me when early on it emerged that the lead character was originally from a working class background. Clare's voice carries no trace of this - and even if we're supposed to believe that Ruth totally transformed her accent into Received English pronunciation (who does that anymore?!) there is a real problem, given that the text is full of class references and observations. As Ruth and her uni pals all sound upper class, the North-South jokes come off as snooty with no hint of self awareness, humour or affection -- and the situation is not helped by the caricatural (working class) Northerner voices. Even more surprising: Cathbad, who sounds like the Duke of Edinburgh in this reading, turns out to be born and raised in Ireland!

In this day and age, *posh* should not be accepted as neutral. Fine if the characters themselves are upper class but there are plenty of good readers around who went to regular comprehensive schools!!

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the narrator loses me

Jane McDowell seemed to have a much closer affinity with the characters of this series than Clare Corbett, who makes central Male characters sound either creepy/sleezy (Cathbad) or uncaring (Nelson). I miss the old characters.

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dnf due to narrator

I love the series, but the new narrator is awful, especially Nelson and Cathbad. could get more than a few chapters in.

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Could the narrator not have listened to the other books?!

Another good story by Elly Griffiths. My only quibble was the narration. After listening to the last 4 books, I was saddened to find everybody’s accents and voices have changed. Cathbhadh’s voice, up to now, has been Irish, because he was…Irish. It’s now some public school posh & Nelson has lost his, although slight, northern accent in favour of a dumbed down version of Cathbhadh. All the men sound the same which makes the story hard to follow at times.
I know narrators change from time to time, but could they have a listen to the previous narrator to get an idea of how they’ve been portrayed previously? It’s like reading a book, voicing the characters in your head, then seeing the book made into a movie. Disappointing 😢

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