Author Elly Griffiths. Photo: Jerry Bauer

It’s Halloween night, and the local museum in King’s Lynn is preparing for an unusual event – the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway arrives, she finds the museum’s curator lying dead beside the coffin.

Elly Griffiths’ novels are steeped in Norfolk, Norse mythology, superstition, folklore and ruthless murder. She’ll be signing copies of A Room Full of Bones, out for the first time in paperback, on Saturday 12 May at Waterstones King’s Lynn.

Griffiths’ heroine is forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway. We first met Ruth in The Crossing Places, set in the tumbling cliffs of the North Norfolk coast, the same venue she used for her highly successful last novel The House at Sea’s End.

Considering that Elly has family in this neck of the woods, what is it she has about King’s Lynn that it’s turned into the Norfolk killing fields?

“I love King’s Lynn and its surroundings,” she says. “I love the layers of history which mean that I will never run out of plots.”

So we haven’t seen the last of the corpses then. How about the poor museum curator?

“I also love King’s Lynn Museum which is a far more impressive place than the museum in my book, though just as fascinating.”

“Soon the museum’s wealthy owner lies dead in his stables too…” Let’s call a halt there, shall we?

Elly Griffiths will be at Waterstones Norfolk Street shop at 11.00am on Saturday 12 May 2012.

ellygriffiths.co.uk