From the publisher: “Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they’re frozen – or so their inside joke goes. Most people don’t know that they travel back in time to complete their research.
The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton. Rumour has it that Cain was part of a sinister group called The Collectors; to become a member, you had to kill a woman…
Fearing for her safety in the middle of a freezing Victorian winter, Ali finds herself stuck in time, unable to make her way back to her life, her beloved colleagues, and her son, Finn, who suddenly finds himself in legal trouble in the present day.
Could the two cases be connected?”
I guess that it’s always a little scary when an established and popular writer tries something new: after all, there’s not that many that manage it successfully. (Stephen King is perhaps my most obvious example.)
But it can be done; and if the writer is both experienced and skilled in prose-wrangling, then it should be good, shouldn’t it? The trick is whether the writer can persuade her loyal readers to take the journey with them. (It’s not for nothing that Stephen King often refers to his loyal readers as being a “Constant Reader”.)
With this in mind I was intrigued to receive for review the latest novel by Elly Griffiths, a very successful crime novelist and who has had published, by my approximate reckoning at the time of typing, at least 30 novels to date. Her Ruth Galloway novels in particular have been Sunday Times Bestsellers.
You might therefore expect this to be another crime novel. And so it is, but with one major difference – this time the story involves time travel.
It is 2023. Alison (Ali) Dawson is a detective working in The Department of Logistics. With her boss Geoff Bastian and super-scientist Serafina Jones, the inventor of the means of time travel, they are developing a means of solving cold cases through time travel – “so cold they are frozen” one character explains.
Although working for the government, this, of course, is all hush-hush. The prime minister doesn’t know about them, although the justice minister Isaac Templeton has been recently made aware of the Department’s work.
His response is to request that Ali go back to 1850 and discover whether Templeton’s great-great-grandfather, Cain Templeton, is a murderer. There have been accusations made that Cain was responsible for the death of Ettie Moran, an artist’s model staying at a house owned by Cain. Isaac, who is in the process of writing a book, wants to clear his ancestor’s name, as he feels that Cain was innocent.
Obviously, there are constraints. We can only go back, not forward (ie: after 2023.) It is mentioned early-on that events in the past don’t seem to affect the future, although it is early days in this time travel process. Just in case, the Department has a charter: Watch, Bear Witness, Don’t Interact, Stay Safe.
Up to now this has not been an issue. Earlier forays into the near past have meant that the Department have usually been like ghosts – felt as a presence, and if seen as something flimsy and ephemeral. This changes when Ali goes back to 1850, because – well, y’know, upgrades.
What Griffiths does well here is create a team that’s diverse in age, race and sexuality, although the focus is pretty much upon the characterisation of Ali. I understand that Griffiths’ portrayal of single mothers in a fulltime working environment is a common characteristic of her work, and if so, she plays to her strengths here. (I’m also reminded of Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins here too.)
Ali’s rebellious no-nonsense attitude is to be admired, and as the survivor of three marriages with a young adult as a son, holding down a complex job, I suspect that she may be quickly taken to heart by readers.
By comparison, the other characters, apart from Ali’s son Finn, are pretty standard and barely developed. They are not the point here. When there are complications that occur in the past and a murder happens in modern times resulting in Finn being arrested as a suspect, generally they appear to be there mainly to support. I suspect that we may find more about them as other books are written. (And yes, I have no doubt that there will be more.)
The contrast between the worlds of 1850 and 2023 is well done, in particular. There’s some nice comparisons between the ages in both the locations (same places, different times) as well as differences in society, between life as a woman now compared with that of 1850, when the patriarchy was dominant. “You’re a white middle-aged woman…you won’t stand out so much” one character says to Ali at one point. It reads great – there’s lots of cultural references, side jokes and cultural points that make it seem real and nicely relatable.
Things do appear to happen very quickly at the beginning, as it seems that after only a few days of research and preparation, Ali is whisked off to 1850. The parts following a murder investigation in the near-present are perhaps the book’s strongest part, clearly something the author feels comfortable with, even when the usual procedures are conveniently stretched a little.
The science-y bit is rather general and timey-wimey. We’re not given too much detail, with Jones, the supremo-scientist and inventor often explaining things in a dumbed-down version, because basically (and perhaps conveniently) you won’t understand it.
However, the plot at the end, and especially the ending, didn’t quite work for me. The perpetrator of the modern crime did not seem logical to me, nor their motive particularly strong, although I do accept that in crimes, is the villain usually logical? There were loose ends, an important character doing something that really shouldn’t happen in the last few pages and a big cliffhanger that felt a little convenient – aren’t crime novels supposed to tie everything up at the end? – which will no doubt be continued in the next novel. Others may be less critical.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Frozen People. The premise isn’t new (I’d recommend Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May books, Jodi Taylor’s St. Mary’s series and the TV shows Life on Mars and even Crime Traveller from 1997 should you want to explore further) but the time travel idea is done here with verve and panache, enough for me to forgive the elements I thought didn’t quite work.
I’d be very interested to read what more regular readers of Griffiths’s work think about the book. If its purpose is to get her usual readers to like something a little different, then I think it will work. I see it as an SF book for those who don’t normally read SF. The Frozen People is a good effort, a brave start to a new series and one which, when it settles down, I think will be very much liked. I would like to read more in the future. (ha!)
© 2025 Mark Yon
Paperback | Quercus Books
THE FROZEN PEOPLE by Elly Griffiths
February 2025 | 352 pages
ISBN: 978 152 943 3333
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Quercus Books
Tiresome, tedious and repetitive. Time travel is a fantasy and there are far too many loose ends in this novel. I like the Ruth Galloway stories but I got tired of being told repeatedly that Ali, our heroine and the only developed character in Frozen People, had married three times. The ending is limp and obviously rushed with an eye on numerous sequels. Perhaps Ali will go after Jack the Ripper in one of them.