bethpeninger 's review for:

A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

4.0

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When an old university friend of Ruth's dies in a house fire, she feels unsettled. Something doesn't seem right about Dan's inability to leave his house in time. As she asks DCI Harry Nelson to make a few calls to his old patch in Blackpool to look into Dan's death, she's contacted by Dan's boss asking if she would be willing to travel to Lancashire to look at some bones Dan had found and felt were of substantial historical importance. After receiving a letter Dan had written to Ruth about the bones, the Raven King, and King Arthur right before he died, Ruth decides to make the trip and turn it into a holiday for her and Kate. Accompanying them is Cathbad, Kate's godfather and Ruth's good friend. Harry and Michelle are in Blackpool themselves visiting family, so it's only a matter of time before somehow Ruth and Nelson are brought together through the inquiry into Dan's death. A far-right wing group called the White Hand has taken an unhealthy interest in King Arthur's bones, and now they have vanished. The possibility that King Arthur wasn't white threatens the group, and they seem determined to keep others from discovering the truth about him. That includes shutting up, permanently, anyone who might want to live a different reality than them. As Ruth, Cathbad, Nelson, and the Blackpool team get closer and closer to the truth of Dan's death, the White Hand, and King Arthur's bones, the life Ruth fears the most is Kate's. This work exposes Kate to the kinds of people Ruth and Nelson work together to rid society of, and this time, Kate is in the sights of the Arch Knight.

Okay, to be clear, the current consensus among specialists is that King Arthur is a mythological or folkloric figure. There may have been a man who was a great leader around the time of King Arthur lore, but there was likely no actual King Arthur. Still, the idea Griffiths introduces in the book - that he was real, his remains could be found, and he wasn't white is fascinating. I love that she's uniquely dismantling the idea of white supremacy through this particular story. I liked that Nelson returned to his beloved Blackpool only to discover it wasn't home as he has always claimed. Home has become Norfolk, and his life is fully there. I really like the tension Griffiths has created between Nelson, Michelle, and Ruth. It makes for an interesting look at the complexity of relationships.