Mystery loses its focus

THE HOUSE AT SEA'S END. By Elly Griffiths. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 353 pages. $25.

"The House at Sea's End" isn't a great murder mystery, but it isn't awful, either. Elly Griffiths' third book in the Ruth Galloway series falls solidly into the pretty good category.

The mystery part starts when bodies are exposed by beach erosion in Norfolk, England, and forensic archaeologist Galloway is called in to help determine how long they've been there. It turns out that the bodies have been there since World War II.

As Galloway, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson and others try to find out how the bodies got there and whether there might have been a war crime, people who could give them answers start dying.

It's a decent mystery, but it's not really the focus of the book.

Most of the drama and emotional involvement in "The House at Sea's End" is about Galloway adjusting to being a new, single mother and figuring out how to deal with the fact that the father is Nelson, who's married to a woman Galloway likes and respects.

Galloway has much guilt. She's working and getting fulfillment from that work while someone else takes care of her daughter. She still sees Nelson, mostly on a professional basis, but is that all it is? Should she let Nelson have more of a role in their daughter's life? Is his wife, or anyone else, going to figure out who the baby's father is?

All this angst takes up most of the book's energy, but there is enough left to bring the mystery to a mildly satisfying conclusion.