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Elly Griffiths

Elly Griffiths

British · 1 series

Amateur sleuth Niche setting Historical mystery

By The Editorial Team · Last reviewed April 2026

Who is Elly Griffiths?

The name on the cover is a pen name. She was born Domenica de Rosa in 1966 in London, trained as an editor, and spent years working in publishing before she started writing fiction seriously. The Elly Griffiths name came when she sold the first Ruth Galloway novel and wanted to separate her writing life from her editorial career. It stuck. There are now more than twenty novels under that name.

Ruth Galloway is a forensic archaeologist at the University of North Norfolk, solitary and sharp, more comfortable with bones than with people. The series opens in 2009 with a discovery of bones on the Norfolk salt marshes — possibly Iron Age, possibly recent — and the collaboration that follows between Ruth and DCI Harry Nelson sets the template for everything that comes after. The Norfolk landscape is not background. It is character. The marshes, the fens, the North Sea coast in winter — Griffiths writes the East Anglian terrain as something pressing and specific, a place that holds its own past in the ground underfoot.

The archaeology is real. Ruth’s methods and knowledge are accurate enough that the books function as an introduction to how field archaeology actually works. Griffiths researched carefully, and it shows. Each novel builds its mystery around a particular historical layer — Neolithic ritual, Roman Britain, the Second World War — and Ruth’s expertise becomes the lens through which the past speaks to the present.

“I love the idea that the past is always underneath us, that you can dig down and find other people’s lives.”

The emotional spine of the series is the relationship between Ruth and Nelson, which is complicated and long-running and never resolved cheaply. Their daughter Kate is born in the third book and becomes a thread through everything that follows. It is domestic and unsentimental at the same time.

Griffiths also writes the Brighton Mysteries, a historical series featuring theatrical agent Stephens and his magician partner Mephisto in 1950s Brighton, which won the CWA Historical Dagger. She was awarded the Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Quick facts

  • Pen name of Domenica de Rosa, born 1966, London
  • Debut: The Crossing Places (2009)
  • Ruth Galloway series: 16 novels, 2009 to 2023
  • Also writes the Brighton Mysteries (Stephens & Mephisto)
  • Edgar Award winner; CWA Historical Dagger

What order should I read Elly Griffiths’s books?

Start with Ruth Galloway from the beginning. The personal arcs — Ruth’s relationship with Nelson, the question of Kate’s parentage, Ruth’s changing place at the university — build across all sixteen books and depend on sequence. The archaeology backdrops shift with each book, but the emotional continuity is cumulative. Begin with The Crossing Places and follow publication order through to The Last Remains.

Ruth Galloway

  1. 1
    The Crossing Places
    The Crossing Places (2009)

    Bones found on the Norfolk salt marshes bring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway into contact with DCI Nelson, who is hunting a child killer.

  2. 2
    The Janus Stone
    The Janus Stone (2010)

    The demolition of a Norwich house uncovers a child's skull and a sacrificial stone, pulling Ruth into a mystery with Roman and modern dimensions.

  3. 3
    The House at Sea's End
    The House at Sea's End (2011)

    Bones of six soldiers emerge from a Norfolk cliff, and Ruth must determine whether the Second World War secret buried with them still has the power to kill.

  4. 4
    A Room Full of Bones
    A Room Full of Bones (2011)

    The opening of an ancient coffin at a Norfolk museum is followed by the curator's death, and Ruth investigates a case touching on Native American remains and colonial guilt.

  5. 5
    Dying Fall
    Dying Fall (2012)

    Ruth travels to Lancashire after a colleague's suspicious death and discovers a Bronze Age site linked to white supremacist mythology and present-day violence.

  6. 6
    The Outcast Dead
    The Outcast Dead (2013)

    Bones of a Victorian baby farmer and a series of child abductions converge in a case that forces Ruth to question justice, guilt, and media hysteria.

  7. 7
    The Ghost Fields
    The Ghost Fields (2014)

    A Second World War plane unearthed in a Norfolk field contains a body that should not be there, opening a family mystery with roots in wartime deception.

  8. 8
    The Woman in Blue
    The Woman in Blue (2015)

    A series of threatening letters sent to female priests in the pilgrimage town of Walsingham precedes murder, and Ruth finds herself navigating faith, obsession, and old bones.

  9. 9
    The Chalk Pit
    The Chalk Pit (2017)

    A network of chalk tunnels under Norwich and a missing vulnerable woman lead Ruth into an investigation touching on a secret subterranean community.

  10. 10
    The Dark Angel
    The Dark Angel (2018)

    Ruth is invited to excavate Roman bones in an Italian hill village and finds herself facing a murder that has its roots in the same landscape.

  11. 11
    The Stone Circle
    The Stone Circle (2019)

    Letters from a dead druid and a Neolithic henge draw Ruth and Nelson back to the marshes, and a young girl goes missing in circumstances that echo Nelson's earliest cases.

  12. 12
    The Lantern Men
    The Lantern Men (2020)

    A convicted serial killer offers to reveal his remaining victims' locations only if Ruth leads the excavation — a bargain that pulls her deep into dangerous territory.

  13. 13
    The Night Hawks
    The Night Hawks (2021)

    Bronze Age treasure found by metal detectorists on the Norfolk coast is followed by a body, and Ruth excavates a hoard that someone will kill to keep secret.

  14. 14
    The Locked Room
    The Locked Room (2022)

    A pandemic-era lockdown coincides with the discovery of a walled-up woman in a Norfolk cottage, and Ruth investigates both the historical death and a present-day killer.

  15. 15
    The Last Word
    The Last Word (2023)

    The death of a famous crime writer at a Norfolk literary festival draws Ruth and Nelson into a world of old secrets, literary rivalry, and a killer hiding in plain sight.

  16. 16
    The Last Remains
    The Last Remains (2023)

    Human bones discovered beneath a Cambridge tearoom begin a final case that brings Ruth's story — and her relationship with Norfolk and with Nelson — to a close.

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