The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths

I really enjoyed this murder mystery. It is full of horror, suspense and the wonder of who done it!

It is narrated from the view point of the three female main characters and I particularly enjoyed reading the way they perceived each other; their prejudices and misunderstandings based on looks, jobs, age and gender.
Two of these characters are related – mother and daughter. I loved the way the mother identifies her daughter as a stereotypical teenager, when she is anything but!

There is also a historical aspect to the murders.
The murderer is a copycat; basing the murders on a Gothic writer’s horror story, which one of the characters knows intimately. You get to read this story too and it is an equally haunting and chilling story, within a story. It is revealed a few pages at a time throughout the course of the book and it adds to the fear and sense of foreboding in general.

I love when a writer sets a story from the past in parallel with a modern day story.
Elly Griffiths is tremendous at doing this and I have loved all her stories that contain a blending of past and present in some form. I am a huge fan of Elly Griffiths and love her crime fiction books, in particular, her series starring Dr. Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist. The complexity of her murder mysteries and the personable, likeability of all the characters, but particularly Ruth, means I can’t put these books down.