The English writer Elly Griffiths loves contradiction. In A Room Full of Bones, she gives us a possibly homicidal animal rights’ activist married to a trainer of racehorses. Then there’s the recently wedded police detective, female, who is having an affair with a man who turns out to be a suspect in a murder case. And, also typically for Griffiths, we get the dashing druid whose day job is as a dreary man of science at its most humble level.

This list, tantalizing in its promises, doesn’t include Griffiths’s two central characters, both of whom, adorable as they are, represent scads of contradiction. DCI Harry Nelson is the ace sleuth in all of North Norfolk, somewhat abrupt by nature and super organized (Harry loves lists). Ruth Galloway, rather overweight and inclined to the solitary life, heads up the forensic archeology department at the University of North Norfolk.

In the previous three books in the series, Harry and Ruth were frequently thrown together in the interests of solving murders. On the one momentous occasion they slept together, the intimacy led to Ruth’s pregnancy and later to the birth of Kate. A baby daughter suited the single Ruth just fine. Harry, on the other hand, had to answer to the beautiful Michelle, to whom he has been happily married for 20 years.

In the new book, the triangle of cause and effect involving Harry, Ruth and Michelle is played for all it’s worth, which is plenty in terms of melodrama. The current state of the complicated relationships pumps up the emotional level over that of the earlier books, giving a new density to the series, a sense that events are no longer taking place exclusively on the surface.

Meanwhile, Harry and Ruth must deal with an inexplicable upswing in local drug trafficking, two unfathomable deaths, some funny business at a horse racing stable, numerous interventions by the druid fellow, and countless episodes of mysterious contradiction. Just typical reading time in the company of Elly Griffiths’s friendly, funny and involving series.