She Treads Softly: The Graveyard Girls

Monday, August 11, 2025

The Graveyard Girls

The Graveyard Girls by Rita Herron
8/14/25; 444 pages
Bookouture
Detective Ellie Reeves #11

The Graveyard Girls by Rita Herron is a highly recommended crime thriller. Detective Ellie Reeves, Ranger Cord McClain, and Special Agent Derrick Fox all return to search for a serial killer. Even though this is the eleventh book in the series, it can be read as a standalone novel.

In the opening we know cousins Ida and Hetty see a girl being attacked fifteen years ago and they think they recognize the killer. Then we learn sixteen-year-old Ruth Higgins has disappeared and their father, gravedigger Earl Bramble was the suspected killer. He disappeared before he was arrested. In the present, when the skeletal remains of a teenage girl is found, with a red shoe nearby, it is thought to be Ruth, but turns out to be another girl. It is clear that a serial killer is at work when another teen girl is found in a burial site. Detective Ellie Reeves, Ranger Cord McClain and Special Agent Derrick Fox are called in to assist local law enforcement with the investigation.

The writing is very good as it follows the present investigation and also includes flashbacks and journal entries from the past. Brambletown, in Northern Georgia, is a small town that is being poisoned from an underground fire and the area is in a depression. The setting adds a eerie atmosphere to the novel with both poisoned minds and land involved.

Those following the series will already be acquainted with Ellie, Cord and Derrick who are all well established characters. There are many other characters involved with the investigation, many of them wounded emotionally and/or physically. All the characters are distinctive individuals. As with the last book, I'm not interested in the side story of Ellie and Cord's burgeoning relationship.

The narrative held my complete attention to the end. While reading for clues about the identity of the killer, there are plenty of red herrings and unlikable characters along the way. It is assumed that Earl is back, but he is never seen, and Ida and Hetty both confirm that they haven't seen him. Clearly the investigation must expand follow the clues to look for other suspects in the area.

The Graveyard Girls is a great choice for those who enjoy crime thrillers and are following the Ellie Reeves series. Thanks to Bookouture for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.