Coming Soon: 'The Killing Time' by Elly Griffiths

 
Published by Quercus
12 February 2026.

The 2nd Mystery in the Ali Dawson series

Ali Dawson is a police detective who leads a unit that investigates cases so cold her team must travel to the distant past to solve them. But Ali and the team haven't been allowed to time-travel ever since their technical expert, Jones, got stuck in Victorian London, never to be seen again.

To distract herself from meaningless tasks, Ali decides to look into a present-day case - a series of apparent suicides, all young men who fell to their death from high places. She believes the deaths are linked to a psychic medium called Barry Power, who convinced the boys they could fly. Ali goes to one of Power's shows where he claims to be in contact with Jones.

When Ali notices that evening that her cat, Terry, has gone missing, she decides to go back in time just long enough to prevent Terry from escaping through his open cat flap. A dangerous plan which backfires, and she finds herself once more in Victorian London, where she meets Jones, as well as Power, and the darkly mysterious Cain Templeton with whom Ali has unfinished business from her previous visit to the past . . .

Elly Griffiths is the author of a series of crime novels set in England’s Norfolk County and featuring forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway. The first in the series, Crossing Places, earned a good deal of praise both in Griffiths’ native country, England, and in the U.S. The Literary Review termed it “a cleverly plotted and extremely interesting first novel, highly recommended.  Since then, Elly has written fourteen further novels in the series.  Recently she has written a second series set in Brighton in the 1950’s featuring magician Max Mephisto and DI Stephens. There are seven books in the series. Her third series features DI Harbinder Kaur. Her most recent series features Police Detective Ali Dawson who deals with Cold Cases. 

www.ellygriffiths.co.uk