The Ghost Fields

March 30, 2015
The unearthing in Norfolk of a WWII-era U.S. plane, with its pilot in his seat and a bullet hole in his temple, propels British author Griffiths's well-crafted seventh mystery featuring forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway (after 2014's The Outcast Dead). The pilot is identified as Frederick J. Blackstock, a scion of a prominent Norfolk family, who served in the American air force, though Fred was supposedly lost at sea in a different plane and presumed dead. The decision of an American TV company to do a program about Norfolk's abandoned airfields brings Frank Barker, an academic Ruth was attracted to while working together on an earlier case, back into her life. The arrival of the film company and Fred's American daughter, Nell Blackstock Goodheart, sets the stage for a series of deaths and personal revelations that culminates in Ruth's being trapped in massive Blackstock Hall during a terrible storm. Griffiths nicely blends history and romance with gothic elements.