The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

published 2025

 

 

Last year I wrote a post about recommending books to people: I said sometimes friends ask for a good title or author, and then

‘I ask them a few questions about what they like, what kind of thing they are looking for, and then say what I planned from the beginning: ‘Elly Griffiths, or Mick Herron’ if they want crime.’ 

They are the names I have ready in my head.

Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series is probably my favourite crime series of the past 20 years, and Harry Nelson is – I claim – the Thinking Woman’s Policeman. The series came to an end last year.

However, she is a prolific writer – such a nice change, it is so disappointing when you find a writer you love and the list of titles is short. Elly G has a number of series (featured on the blog, use the tags below) produces books regularly – and now has started a new series. Hooray. She writes a book: I buy it.  The Frozen People came out last week and I read it over the weekend, with huge enjoyment.

New protagonist is Ali Dawson, a 40-something single mother with an interesting past, a police detective living in East London. She has a grown-up son and a cat, and her specific area of investigation is crimes in the past. Ah, another cold case series you say (and nothing wrong with that). But not exactly. Ali’s top secret department includes physicists who have found a method of time travel, and they are working on the ability to send detectives back into the past to nose around.

Well. An unlikely premise, and if it was an author I didn’t know I might have hesitated, but I trusted her and actually it was quite splendid. Ali goes back to 1850 and ends up staying longer than the initially-planned hour: unnerving for her work colleagues and friends.

 

SLIGHT SPOILER

 

She does get back, but someone else is then locked into 1850. And is this a two-way path? Could a figure from history ‘have found the ingress point… and passed through it? Is he, even now, wandering along the Old Kent Road in a top hat?’

There is a murder in the 2020s – someone connected to a person being looked at in 1850 - and there is a whirlwind of activity and danger.

It is difficult to make all this clear without spoilering – I loved it that I hadn’t the faintest idea where the story was going when I started, and I would like others to have the same experience and surprises.

Elly G’s books always have wonderful heroines, and this one is right on track:

‘Shall I put the exercise bike in the pile for the dump?...Did you ever use it?’

‘Of course I used it,’ says Ali. ‘Where else would I hang my clothes that are too clean to be washed and too dirty to go in the wardrobe?’

And, in 1850

‘I hope I haven’t shocked you. But I feel you are a woman of the world.’ It must be the shawl. Ali nods, indicating her unshockability’

And then there’s her son Finn: ‘…with excellent exam results and a mildly obsessive personality. Finn tries to remedy this by scheduling times when he can be impulsive. His final row with Cosima involved a surprise holiday booked for 2024.’

Ali does her research (as, of course, has the author) to find out how to dress and behave in 1850, and so the book really does explain how everyday life worked then, particularly in the less wealthy areas, and it’s fascinating. And of course I loved the clothes descriptions, and the list of what Ali has to put on:

Corset, stiffened with whalebone at the front and tied at the back by a complicated pulley system... Two cotton petticoats. One flannel petticoat. Horsehair and linen petticoat. Vest, camisole, chest preserver.

I’m sure some crime fans might be saying ‘well this doesn’t sound like my kind of thing’, but I would say: give it a try. I am delighted at the thought of a whole new series, and can’t wait to read the next one and find out what happens to Ali and her friends and colleagues.

Pictures from NYPL – I went a couple of years either side of 1850.  The character Ali takes on in the book is very much working class, so the pictured clothes will be much smarter than hers. There aren’t so many pictures around of people not in expensive clothes.

Ali is very pleased to have a hand-warming muff.

Men, same source.