Customer Reviews

Grave Consequences (Emma Fielding Mysteries)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Emma Fielding is in England helping an acquaintance with a dig a an old abbey. One of the students is missing. A fairly modern skeleton is found on the site. There are other tensions among her friends and the general community. A coven of Wiccans is interested in the site, and there's no good coffee for miles. Emma Fielding is seriously doubting her judgement in helping her new friend Jane and her husband on this dig. When the missing student is found murdered, Jane is a suspect and Emma feels that she should help solve the crime as well as find the body of a supposed saint buried on the site.

This is a typical and entertaining Emma Fielding mystery. The characters are very real and so are their interactions and problems. The murderer is somewhat difficult to identify, but it all comes together in the end. I would have liked to have seen more of Pooter and his buddies, they were more entertaining than Emma's hosts, but maybe they'll show up in another novel.

I really enjoyed this second book in the Emma Fielding series. Emma was first introduced in Site Unseen, also by Dana Cameron. What I like about Emma is that she is real, with quirks and insecurities and she is also very cool. Dana does a great job making Emma come alive. The other characters in this story also came alive for me. This book was quick to draw me in and it kept me wondering what would happen next. I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good story.

Having visited my wife-to-be in England several times while she was a student there, I found the depiction of student life and "pub"-life wonderful and very accurate. I found the characters fascinating and funny and the answer to the mystery was shocking and original...definitely recommended!

I have a mixed reaction. The setting of English town and speech, and Prof. Emma Fielding's archaeological project in a medieval graveyard, are both excellently rendered. This has the best representation of field work I've ever seen in a novel, better even than Elkins or Connor. Occasionally the text sparkles with wit: [a scheming archaeologist has] "more machinations than a Detroit assembly line, more plots than a graveyard." However, this story is miscategorized as a mystery, dashing my eager anticipation. IMO it is, rather, an intense novel of emotionally saturated personal relationships, on the fringe of Romance novels. It has a very high talk:event ratio.

The mystery is entirely encapsulated in the cover blurb (a misplaced body and a missing student), and, incredibly, nothing further develops in the first 243 pages (and then Emma grossly mishandles the new evidence). The plot is odd, for it is nearly static. This book is not for someone seeking an EZ read, suspense, action, violence, puzzles, clues, deduction, misdirection, archaeology, plot development, romance, sex, terror, or horror. None of that develops in the course of Emma's many long discussions, and few outward events. Emma, and her author, utterly ignore the police. This book is for oppressive psychological tension, spot-on English invective, feminism, acute observation, and a structure I think is derived from Romance novels (or perhaps the author's deconstructionist colleagues in academe). Emma is a self-confessed "confused" heroine who is short on humor, deductive skills, and solid motivation, but long on intense introspection, heart-to-heart talks, and fearful second thoughts (the source of most feelings of "menace" here). The English are reticent to join in the personal talk. Emma eventually wonders, after prying into the lives of many rather unpleasant people, "why was I getting myself involved in this." I wondered, too, for I did not find her an empathetic heroine, let alone the other characters, and Cameron wasn't making efforts to keep my interest in this slow moving story. Emma merely has a "need" to pry into her friends' affairs, in both senses of the word. There's no final resolution, since Emma's vacation ends before the case is closed! Maybe all this is realistic of unsatisfactory relationships and episodes in ongoing lives. Some might think it cathartic; I found it overwrought and gravely glum.

This is the SECOND book in the series, without SITE UNSEEN there are several fractured (incomplete) relationships in this story, especially with the males. Here, their role in Emma's life is to make opportunistically reassuring phone calls from overseas. I was hugely disappointed.

This book was funny,scary,and interesting all at the same time.The main character, Timothy Murphy, gets scared easily and you can guess his reaction when he sees his own gravestone. I think that this book is one of the best I have ever read.It was easily understood. I would recommend it to boys and some girls of 8-12.

I looked forward to reading the second Emma Fielding GRAVE CONSEQUENCES by Dana Cameron once I dried it out. My copy was doused with six inches of rain, maybe I should have left some of the pages damp because the reading was dry and as uneven as the ripples of the paper.
A great premise, missing student, lost saint, and a medieval cemetery, but it didn't hold through the narrative.
Hope the next one is better.
Nash Black, author of HAINTS.

I normally don't give up on a book, but I could not make it through even the second chapter of this one. So incredibly boring, I felt the author just kept re-stating things in different words. Everything about it was strange and non-engaging. I put it away and picked up You can lead a horse to murder instead - love it after reading 3 pages. That's how you write a mystery.

Cameron's main character, Emma Fielding, is an archaeologist who is invited to England for a dig. As the story develops, three sets of remains are uncovered: a saintly woman from medieval times, a man from more recent years, and a graduate student who had been working on the dig. Fielding pokes her nose into these mysteries, encountering contemporary Wiccans (witches) and other local characters. She also gets involved in the marital problems of her hosts. Those interested in field archaeology may enjoy the descriptions of a dig in progress. While the author's writing style is easy and pleasant to read, the mystery elements are not well focused. The ending is anticlimactic.

I was able to dig only halfway through this book before giving up on it. None of the characters are in the least interesting, attractive or believable. Most are one dimensional. While the story is ostensibly set in the (imaginary?) English town of Marchester, there is virtually none of the local color one looks for to give one a sense of time and place. The fact that the author and her protagonist are both archaeologists promised an interesting slant on the plot, a promise not kept.