I bought this book on autopilot because I’m an enthusiastic Elly Griffiths fan. I love her nonchalant present tense style, her wit and her engaging characters including cats. And I have fond memories of interviewing her in a Brighton café for Ink Pellet a few years ago. However, apart from noticing that this new book was the first in a new crime series, I had no idea what it was about.
And it was a shock. This is crime fiction spliced with sci-fi and hey, I don’t “do” fantasy of any sort so at 5% in (I was reading it on Kindle) I considered throwing it crossly aside. I didn’t want to read about time travel, thanks very much. But, because this is TGEG (The Great Elly Griffiths) and because I’d paid for it, I read on – sceptically. And thank goodness I did. I should have trusted her. She can make anything compelling and by the time I’d got to 15% I was completely hooked.
Ali Dawson is a police officer in her fifties with a long history of failed marriages and an adult son, Finn, whom she adores. She now works for a special unit engaged on cold cases – very cold because the current one dates back to 1850. Think His Dark Materials, Alice in Wonderland, Narnia and even Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree because Ali actually visits the period and place in question. And the reason it works fictionally is that she and her colleagues daren’t tell anyone what they’re doing because the reaction, obviously, would be cynical disbelief and suspicion of laughable irrationality. And a feet-on-the-ground reader like me identifies very much with that. Moreover Griffiths is very hot on the day-to-day details – food, clothing, sanitation and so on – at both ends which make it convincing. And there’s wry humour in that Ali has her 2023 brain and experience with her even in 1850 so there are some delicious anachronisms and characters she meets find her speech mode very strange. She explains by saying she comes from Hastings.
Finn is a special adviser to a Tory cabinet minister and the intricate, quasi gothic plot links his boss with the events in 1850 as we, like Dawson and Griffiths ponder metaphysical questions about how the past affects the present and vice-versa. If you move back in time can you change events? And could Ali have been murdered, or painted in 1850? Could someone from 1850 have come “through the gate” (an experience which causes terrible vertigo, by the way) to commit crimes in 2023?
When all is said and done, this novel is a whodunit. And I didn’t see the answer coming – yet another Griffiths strength. She’s very adept at keeping you guessing and springing surprises.
The Frozen People is great fun and very entertaining – as Griffiths always is. I’m now very intrigued to see where she takes this next because it is very clearly presented as the start of a series. I don’t think she’s likely to convert me to fantasy in general but she has certainly taught me a lesson about managing my prejudices and preferences.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Rule Britannia by Daphne du Maurier
