---
title: "A few critical notes on Elly Griffith's The Frozen People"
layout: post
image: 
    feature: header_frozen.png
doi: "https://doi.org/10.59348/ebtbq-5jn10"
archive: "https://wayback.archive-it.org/22123/20231101171300/https://eve.gd/2025/03/22/a-few-critical-notes-on-elly-griffiths-the-frozen-people"
---
This week, I took some time out to read Elly Griffith's most recent book, _The Frozen People_. I thought this sounded quite an interesting genre-fusing novel, welding together detective fiction and SF/time travel. Sure, it's hardly the first to do so, but it sounded worth a read. I'd met the author a few years' back through a mutual connection: Lesley Thompson, another British crime writer.

I just wanted to write a few brief critical notes, with spoilers. One is to say that I had wished their was less character building and more actual events. I found the mentions of the lead character having had three marriages -- shock! -- repetitious. There was no real _link_ between the historic period and the crime that occurs in the present. The murder could have occurred owing to _any_ secret government project in the present and happens just because the project lead is zealously devoted to it. I didn't think there were enough clues for a reader to be able to guess who was the culprit, either, except by dint of narrative structure feeling that the character who dunnit had appeared prominently and seemed beyond reproach.

Perhaps the thing that most bothered me, though, was that there seems to be a mistake in how time-travel "works" in the text (or, if not, then time travel here is posited to work entirely different to most works of fiction). Alisoun goes back from 2023 to 1850 and we are told that she "must get back to her own time in order to be born in 1972 and give birth to Finn in 1992" (p. 100). Hang on? Why does her not being able to get back to 2023 mean that she might not be born in 1972 or that Finn won't be born in 1992? From the characters' perspective, she did both those things and, then, in 2023 travelled back in time. Surely the only things that won't happen if she doesn't return are those that might lie in her _future_, after 2023? It's not as though the Ali in 1972 has also vanished. Because Finn doesn't disappear when Ali leaves to go back in time and her past from his perspective hasn't changed. We are asked "What if this is a new reality where Finn doesn't exist?". But that would only be from _this_ Ali's perspective. Basically, she will be born in 1972, go through her life, and then travel back in time in 2023. If she doesn't come back and dies in Victorian London, she will still be born in 1972 and go through the same time loop.

Tricky thing, time travel.