Ruth imagines that [she] simply left her past behind her. Something that Ruth, as an archaeologist, could have told her is almost impossible to achieve. [loc. 2968]
Set in the first few months of the Covid pandemic: that spring of glorious weather and enforced lockdown, of home-schooling and clapping for carers. I'd almost managed to forget the strangeness of those months ...
Ruth Galloway is sorting her late mother's belongings when she discovers a photo of her own house, with the inscription 'Dawn, 1963' -- thirty years before she moved there. She resolves to find out why her mother would have kept such a picture: but then Covid descends, and Ruth has her hands full with Zoom teaching and home-schooling for her daughter Kate. She has a new next-door neighbour, too, a nice lady named Zoe, with whom she shares the occasional socially-distanced glass of wine. Nelson, meanwhile, is investigating a suspicious suicide. (The dead woman's bedroom door was locked from the outside.) He discovers a series of other suicides which may have been murders. And he's alone in the family house, with his wife Michelle off in Blackpool and his daughters in their own homes. Of course he's going to check on Ruth and Kate...
Some interesting themes here -- plague, diet culture, mothers and daughters -- though I'm not sure I wholly believe in the murder mystery. As is typical of later books in long-running series, The Locked Room is as much (if not more) about developments in the lives of the characters as it's about the crime at the heart of the novel. Some of the developments here are quite alarming (that circle of protection is not going to be enough) and there's a minor cliffhanger at the end which makes me keen to read the next in the series (The Last Remains, due February 2023).
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