Artifacts (Faye Longchamp Mysteries, No. 1) [Paperback]

Mary Anna Evans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2004

Faye Longchamp is doing something she hates, finding and selling artifacts. But she's doing it to save something she loves. Joyeuse, the plantation manor held by the women in her family ever since it was her great-great-grandmother inherited it. Faye makes a little money on the legitimate dig on a nearby island until that work is interrupted by the murder of two young members of the crew. Then bones of a much older murder are uncovered, and clues lead Faye to suspect an old friend, a long-time business partner, and a new love interest.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Few corners of Florida remain unmined for crime fiction and now, happily, there's one less. The shifting little isles along the Florida Panhandle-hurricane-wracked bits of land filled with plenty of human history-serve as the effective backdrop for Evans's debut, a tale of greed, archeology, romance and murder. The latest in a long line of courageous and resourceful women, Faye Longchamp can trace her mixed ancestry back to a slave and a once magnificent plantation house, Joyeuse, which she now claims by heritage and squatter's rights and whose very existence is a closely guarded secret. Faye ekes out a living by illegal "pothunting" and acting as an assistant on a legitimate archeological dig, but her discovery of a human skull and the subsequent murder of two archeology students threaten her precarious existence. While Evans stretches credulity with the sheer number of unlikely elements that make up the plot, including a mysterious Indian and a 19th-century diary, the rich setting and the lively characters that aid or bedevil Faye in her quest more than compensate. Readers should welcome this strong new heroine.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Faye Longchamp is an archaeology student trying to hang on to her ancestral home on North Florida's Gulf Coast. When the property taxes on the dilapidated mansion--inherited from her great-great-grandmother, Cally, a freed slave--become too high, Faye decides to put her knowledge to work by digging up some artifacts to sell on the black market. What she finds, however, isn't arrowheads; it's a body, and judging by the head wound and the Jackie Kennedy-style earrings, it's been in the ground for several decades, and foul play put it there. If Faye reports her find, she will reveal her illegal activities and risk losing everything. To save herself and her home, Faye decides to learn more about the body in the ground. First-novelist Evans introduces a strong female sleuth in this extremely promising debut, and she makes excellent use of her archaeological subject matter, weaving past and present together in a multilayered, compelling plot. Let's hope Faye Longchamps' home-restoration project is one of those remodeling jobs that never ends. Barbara Bibel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; First Edition edition (March 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590581806
• ISBN-13: 978-1590581803
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm the author of the award-winning Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries: ARTIFACTS, RELICS, EFFIGIES, FINDINGS, and FLOODGATES. The sixth in the series, STRANGERS, will be published in October.

I'm a a chemical engineer by training and license, with a degree in engineering physics thrown in for spice, but I love reading about history and writing about an archaeologist. Truth be told, I'm a little jealous of Faye and her archaeological adventures.

I enjoy reading, writing, gardening, spending time with my family, cooking, and playing my 7-and-a-half-foot-long monster of a grand piano. My cat helps me write, so I should probably put his name on my books. Check them out here on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, June 14, 2003

By 

Elizabeth Slater (North Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Artifacts (Faye Longchamp Mysteries, No. 1) (Hardcover)

A debut novel by Mary Anna Evans, this is wonderful mystery set in the panhandle of North Florida. Faye Longchamp is, at heart, an archeologist. However, she is driven to illegal digging to save Joyeuse, her ancestral home. While engaging in this activity, Faye, with her companion Joe (yum, yum!), uncover a body on one of the nearby islands. When they go back to examine it, the body had disappeared. Why? Who else knew?

Meanwhile, at the respectable dig where Faye is assisting a former professor, two of the students left on the island overnight disappear.

What is happening in Faye's quiet corner of the world? How could she keep Joyeuse? How could she keep Joyeuse hidden???
Who else was digging illegally?

I loved this book, and cannot wait for the next installment. I was pleasantly surprised with Ms. Evans first novel, and I continue to look forward to Faye's next adventure.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars exciting and colorful amateur sleuth novel, May 12, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Artifacts (Faye Longchamp Mysteries, No. 1) (Hardcover)

Off the coast of the Florida Panhandle lay the Last Isles and on Joyeuse lies the antebellum mansion belonging to Faye Longchamp. It is badly in need of repairs but Faye barely can pay taxes and the last thing she wants is lose the home that has been in her family for generations. She earns the money to pay the taxes by illegally digging up artifacts on her land and the National Wild Refuge and selling them to collectors whom don't care about the source.

Faye also works on an archeological dig on nearby Seagreen Island when two students in the group disappear. On a hunch, Faye starts digging and finds the two bodies, both shot to death. The dig is closed and Faye looks for artifacts on Water Island when she comes under attack by a man she thought was a friend and his partner who are digging up priceless Clovis artifacts. When she digs up the body of a young debutante who disappeared many years ago she comes to the attention a killer who intends to make Faye his fourth victim.

Faye is biracial and doesn't feel as if there is a place for her in mainstream society, which is why she is determined to hold on too her land, the only place she believes she belongs. She doesn't realize she has two killers who want her dead before she discovers and reveals their secrets. ARTIFACTS is an exciting and colorful amateur sleuth novel that is rich in atmosphere giving the reader a picture of what it takes to live in an island culture.

Harriet Klausner

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Heroine Who isn't Afraid of Bending the Law a Bit, How Sweet, December 26, 2005

By 

Maggie Mae (Reno, Nevada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Artifacts (Faye Longchamp Mysteries, No. 1) (Paperback)

Archaeology student Faye Longchamp is struggling to keep her ancestrail home of Joyeuse on Florida's northern gulf coast by illegally digging up artifacts on federal lands and selling them on the black market. However, one day she unearths a human skull and it doesn't look like it's been in the ground for a couple hundred years, more like only three or four decades, so it's not fresh, but not an artifact either, and judging by the head wound, this woman met a violent end. She decides to try and find out who the dead woman was on her own, as she can hardly go to the police and confess that she'd found the skull by illegally pot-hunting.

Then the next day two students on a legitimate dig she'd been working on wind up missing, then their bodies are found in shallow graves and she has to wonder if their deaths are tied in with her own dead person. And, of course, there is a very bad guy out there who wants to keep this all quiet, so Faye is in a spot of trouble.

ARTIFACTS won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Mystery and it is easy to see why. This is a story that will keep any mystery buff glued to his chair till the reading is finished. A darned good debut, one you won't be able to put down, that what this book is.