The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths

The Outcast Dead is the 6th book in Elly Griffiths' series featuring Dr. Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist.  And I am now caught up with this series.  The next book will be published in May.  I loved the beginning of The Outcast Dead:

"And we ask your abundant blessing, Lord, on these, the outcast dead...Lord, you told us that not a sparrow falls without our Father in Heaven knowing.  We know that these people were known to you and loved by you..."

Ruth is attending a service for The Outcast Dead in Norwich.  Each year, this service is held to remember the poor, the prostitutes, the ones unknown and unloved that had been buried in mass graves in times past.  Ruth and her team have discovered some bones belonging to a woman who may be the infamous Jemima Green, otherwise known as Mother Hook.  And the skeleton indeed has a hook at the end of one of the arms.  Jemima Green was a convicted murderer of a young child and a horror story has grown up around the circumstances of her life and memorialized in a rhyme used to scare kids:

Don't cry little darling.

Don't cry little dear. 

Don't cry little darling.

Or Mother Hook will hear.

Ruth's boss is delighted with the possibility that the so-called Mother Hook has been found by his department.  There is a TV show scheduled that will include the discovery and Ruth gets dragged into the filming.  Meanwhile, DCI Harry Nelson is busy investigating a local family that has had their third child die unexpectedly.  He's not sure if the parents have had something to do with the death, but  before he can determine this, another child is in danger, abducted by a person who leaves a note signed, The Childminder.  Things become quite grim when someone else close to Nelson and Ruth is also taken.  Can Nelson solve the clues in time and how does all this connect with the Mother Hook discovery?

The whole of this book is concerned with parents, both mothers and fathers, mother's helpers, and their relationships with dear little children.  As this series has progressed, we've come to know and love so many characters.  And children have been born and lives have been changed by these kids.  We see in this book the fierce love that each of them have for their own children and indeed for the children of their colleagues as well.  They all step up and get involved when something unthinkable happens.  This author does a great job with making us care too.  The last quarter of the book was quite scary and I could not put it down.  And in the end, lives have been changed and mysteries solved.

I recommend this series so highly.  The settings are always vivid and the archaeology info is always quite interesting.  The next book, The Ghost Fields, will be coming out soon and I can't wait.