Page Turners – February 2026 review

‘The Crossing Places‘ by Elly Griffiths was the Page Turners book for January. This was published in 2009 and was the first of a series of fifteen books in which Dr Ruth Galloway, an archaeologist, works with the police.

The book is set on the north Norfolk salt marshes, a mysterious place where the earth meets the sea, and it draws on the mythology of the Iron Age people who once roamed the area. Dr Galloway is called in when a set of bones are found on the marshes. Soon she is drawn in to the investigation of two missing girls and is studying a set of anonymous letters with biblical, literary and archaeological references. As well as covering the investigation, the book gives us a story of Ruth’s personal life and the backstory which we will presumably need to know if we are to follow her through further books. Whilst the book does stand alone and the majority of the loose ends are tied up, it leaves us with one plot twist to take us into the next book.

The majority of us enjoyed this book and definitely regarded it as a page turner. However this was probably more for the descriptive writing and the characters than for the plot. We felt it gave a very good sense of the landscape. The main characters were interesting and relatable and some of us have already read more books in the series to learn how their story progresses. We were less convinced by various aspects of the story and felt that the way the various parts of the plot were tied up in the final chapters was less than satisfactory.

Some of us have copies of the book that we are willing to share so do get in touch if you would like to swap our page turner for one of your own.

On another note – we regularly get requests from people who would like to join our group but we really cannot let it get any bigger if we are all to have the opportunity to join in the discussion. We are also limited by the number of people that we can fit in our living rooms. However if there is anyone out there who would like to start up a further book group, we would definitely encourage you to do so and would be happy to talk you through how we operate.

Deborah Wallis, convenor