The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths
An exciting mystery that allows the reader to view and contemplate the differences, similarities and connections between the 19th and 21st centuries.
Elly Griffiths began her career with a charming series of women’s romantic fiction set in Italy under her birth name, Domenica de Rosa, before becoming an immensely successful mystery writer whose work is widely translated and published in many countries, with over five million copies sold.
Born in London and a longtime resident of Brighton, England, she uses both locations as settings for the majority of her more recent works. She has been honored with multiple prestigious awards, including the Theakston Old Peculier Outstanding Contribution Award in Harrogate at their July 17-19, 2025 Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate for her “significant contributions to crime fiction and her unwavering commitment to the genre over a remarkable career.”
Readers on this side of the pond anxiously yearn for her latest books to be published in the United States, as there is a frustrating delay of six months or longer.
The Frozen People has the tagline “some murders can’t be solved in just one lifetime” and is an inventive departure from forensic crime detection in the previous Ruth Galloway, Max Mephisto and Kaur Harbinder series, as well as her Justice Jones YA 1930s mysteries. It is the first of several planned novels that will feature Alison “Ali” Dawson, a particularly vivid police detective whose investigations veer and commingle with the science fiction genre. Ali experientially “knows that time is a relative concept.”
Cold Cases and Time Travel
At 50, Ali is late middle-aged, married and divorced three times with an adult son named Finn Kennedy, surnamed for husband number one. Defying stereotypes, she has dyed Ferrari red hair, a nose ring and a police department “uniform” that typically consists of jeans, black jacket and trainers/sneakers.
She has resided in the East End of London since Finn was 4 years old, before the neighborhood transformed from cockney to decidedly multi-cultural. Ali works on the third floor of #14 Eel Street, which houses several commercial businesses and also a small, secretive police department. This is the mysterious Cold Case Unit, so named because the cases are frozen in time and may originate in another century.
Friends and family assume age and experience have merited her a safe desk job. Team assignments are top secret and known only to a handful of upper-echelon government officials. Their work seems unbelievable as they physically time travel searching for evidence to clear puzzling cases.
A Specialized Team of “Frozen People”
Career police officer Ali is currently assigned to this euphemistically vague Department of Logistics, nicknamed “the frozen people” by a co-worker. This specialized unit was established a decade ago with Geoffrey Bastian as supervisor under the direction of brilliant, radical-thinking Italian physicist Serafina Pellegrini, who goes by the name Jones.
Time travel has been an obsession and her continuously developing skill since initially conceiving of an experimental method to move atoms in space. Somehow, she managed to persuade an unnamed high-level government official to fund the fantastical project and create an entire team whose members have signed the Official Secrets Act.
Team members include John, an older successful murder investigator; Bud, whose expertise is quantum physics; and Dina, Ali’s best chum at work, and the computer expert, who, despite being 15 years younger and black, is called Ali’s “twin” by coworkers.
The Rules of Time Travel
They time traveled together for two hours back to 1976 to witness the furtive burial in the garden of a victim named Laura Mulholland by her second husband, who was cleared of the crime. Since the perpetrator had died and the house long since demolished, they were unable to share the results obtained through these unorthodox methods with Laura’s children; however, it was satisfying just to know the truth.
Since then, they have made a few short exploratory and evidence-gathering trips.
Certain rules are observed, primarily that they are not allowed to interact or interfere with people from before. Their charter or protocol is printed on the office kitchenette wall: “Watch, Bear Witness, Don’t Interact, Stay Safe.” The assumption has been that they can’t really be seen by others.
They are sent back in time to observe, materializing in a specified location which must be marked with a special paint as the portal to return will open in that exact spot precisely at a designated time, an hour or two after arrival. Fortunately, mistakes haven’t occurred, for the ramifications of being stranded in another era are unfathomable.
“Innocent” Ancestors and Secret Societies
The Frozen People begins with a challenging new mission. Ali is to be transported back to 1850 Victorian London to investigate the brutal murders of three women. The purpose is to clear the stained honor of a current politician’s great-great-grandfather, suspected but not convicted.
Tory Minister of Justice Isaac Templeton, who has aspirations of becoming Prime Minister, is writing a book about his illustrious family and is determined to prove his ancestor’s innocence by revealing the true killer.
Templeton, highly placed in the government, is well acquainted with the Cold Case Unit and requests Ali be assigned this case as her son Finn is one of his special advisors. However, Finn has no clue that his mother is a time-traveler!
The ancestry of question, the unfortunately named Cain Templeton, a man of great wealth and grand style, was a member of a secret society of like-minded gentlemen dubbed “The Collectors”.
In addition to art, archaeological treasures and intriguing items accumulated while on grand tours, some have collected weird and sometimes rather gruesome oddities, including portions of a hanged man’s brain. Rumors linger that these men may have been involved in the ritualistic murder of female artists’ models, but the detectives of the era seldom investigated prominent, rich men.
A Modern Woman in Victorian London
This assignment is particularly hazardous as it will be the first time a team member has gone back so far in time and will also be travelling solo. Ali Dawson has just a few days to dye her hair, have appropriate period clothing tailored and be rapidly schooled in the speech and manners of a pious middle-class Victorian woman who believes in the superiority of men as well as possessing domestic skills; certainly not an easy task for this outspoken modern feminist.
She will be allotted a small sum of money, a book of the period, and if all goes as arranged, will be in 1850 London and return in a mere hour or two.
What could possibly go wrong? Plenty!
Ali becomes trapped in time and has to find lodging, blend in, make acquaintances, investigate and survive until she can be rescued. There is imminent danger and tremendous risk of exposure. Upon arrival, she found another dead model in a boarding house with artists’ studios in a residence owned by Cain Templeton.
Meanwhile, complicating matters back in present-day London, her son Finn, who has been peacefully working and taking care of her cat, is arrested and held for a contemporary murder.
Clever Mystery by Master Storyteller
Elly Griffiths has written an exciting mystery that allows the reader to view and contemplate the differences, similarities and connections between the 19th and 21st centuries. She is an exceptional storyteller and wordsmith who could hold an audience’s rapt attention with a discourse on the merits of various cereals or soap powders, but happily has chosen to create brilliant works of fiction.
The Frozen People is much less focused on time travel than it is about relationships and crime-solving in a tremendously clever mystery with a plethora of intriguing twists. Ali Dawson is a great new character, gar nished with a fine cast of supporting players who will return sometime next year in an as-yet-unnamed second book.
Elly Griffiths is the 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.
Publish Date: 7/8/2025
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Historical, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction
Author: Elly Griffiths
Page Count: 304 pages
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books
ISBN: 9780593834374