Publication Date: October 15, 2024
From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries, an eclectic, thrilling collection of short stories, featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love.
Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur, and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. The Man in Black gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume.
There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.
In the title story, Ruth Galloway crosses paths with a mysterious man in a bookstore, setting in motion a rescue mission that hinges on the legends and lore of Norfolk.
Looking into the past, a young magician in 1920s Leeds wonders just what happened to his missing landlady in “Max Mephisto and the Disappearing Act.”
In “Justice Jones and the Etherphone,” a witty girl detective investigates the dire prediction of a fortune teller in dreary postwar London.
A flashback in time reveals Harbinder Kaur as a Detective Sergeant surviving her first day on the job at Shoreham DCI.
To celebrate the holidays, Ruth gets her very first Christmas tree, and her beloved cat narrates his own seasonal story in “Flint’s Fireside Tale.”
And readers can armchair travel with stories set on the Amalfi Coast, in Capri, and in Egypt as Ruth and DCI Nelson experience their very own version of Death on the Nile.
The Man in Black illustrates the breadth and variety of Elly Griffiths’s talent for blood-chilling, page-turning stories all with her trademark humor and heart.
Some writers spend their entire careers following a simple formula that allows them to churn out assembly-line books. However, for authors like Elly Griffiths, versatility is a gift to readers.
Known and appreciated for her Ruth Galloway mystery series, Griffiths also has a penchant for writing short stories. The Man in Black and Other Stories offers 19 of these short stories, some of which feature characters from her full-length novels. This provides a unique opportunity for the author to showcase her talents.
The stories feature diverse settings and time periods, but the one common characteristic is the unexpected twist at the end, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock. Whether a mystery, a ghost story, a tale of suspense, or a tale of love and loss, the author deftly creates the atmosphere.
While it would be challenging for me to select a favorite from this selection, I appreciate the ones featuring Ruth and Nelson. I feel a sense of connection to these characters from the novels. However, “Articulation” gets props as a spooky tale involving a set of bones found at a home construction site. Being able to incorporate suspense and humor is quite a skill.
The Man in Black and Other Stories provides an excellent introduction to a versatile writer with an established reputation for success.
Elly Griffiths is the USA Today bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series, as well as the standalone novels The Stranger Diaries, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; The Postscript Murders; and Bleeding Heart Yard. She is the recipient of the CWA Dagger in the Library Award and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She lives in Brighton, England.
