11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Verdict Is In - Another Winner, August 3, 2005
Sweeney St. George is in Concord doing research for an article when she meets Pres Whiting. The twelve-year-old tells her about his ancestor Josiah who carved grave stones before he disappeared during the start of the American Revolution. Sweeney is intrigued by his unusual death's heads, so she decides to do further research on him.
Heading home, Pres and Sweeney find the body of a man dressed in a costume from one of the many reenactments that take place nearby.
Meanwhile, Detective Tim Quinn is working on his own missing person case. A history professor researching Josiah Whiting in between reenactments in Concord has vanished. Why did his wife take so long to report him missing? Is he the body Sweeney has discovered? And what is the explosive revelation he had in his book about Josiah?
Once again, Sarah Stewart Taylor has written a great book. She expertly weaves mysteries of the past and present together. I especially enjoyed the historical setting of the Revolutionary War since it's one of my favorite times of American history. The writing style continues to pull you in, and the events and characters have a decidedly dark edge to them, as you would expect from a series dealing with funeral art. There are some very cool twists in the plot; the fact that I spotted a couple before Sweeney didn't dampen my enjoyment of them at all.
This book has a serious flaw, however. Tim Quinn has been elevated to co-star status, but he seems to be trying to take over the book. I didn't actually count, but it felt like he had more page time then Sweeney did, and his sub-plot about finding day care for Megan slowed down the first third of the story. He also felt like he got more character development this time around. This is all compounded by the fact that I don't like him nearly as much as Sweeney or even Toby, who only got a cameo roll in this book.
Overall, this is another great book in a fascinating series. I'm certainly looking forward to Sweeney's next case.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Attend the graveyard tales of Sweeney St. George, November 2, 2005
With "Judgment of the Grave," her third Sweeney St. George mystery novel, Sarah Stewart Taylor reaches an important crossroad with her amateur sleuth, who is an art historian with an interest in funereal art. If there is going to be a formula to Taylor's novels a third novel is the point where it becomes painfully obvious. However, while all three novels begin with a prologue in the past that give us some vague background on past events and while Sweeney's interest in gravestones, mourning jewelry and the like provide her link to one or more murders in the present, I am happy to report that Taylor is making a concerted interest to keep her character more grounded in reality and less in the fictional world where amateur sleuths stumble across murders on an almost monthly basis.
By the end of "Mansions of the Dead," her second novel, I suspected that Taylor was taking pains to avoid going in the wrong direction by telling us more about Detective Tim Quinn than we really needed to know. When Quinn's wife committed suicide at the end of the novel, apparently a victim of post partum depression, it seemed an almost gratuitous infliction of pain on a supporting character. But I suspected that Quinn was being groomed by Taylor to play a more active role in mysteries to come, giving Sweeney a legitimate liaison (if not more) with the police. Indeed, it is Quinn more than Sweeney who is at the nexus of the criminal investigations at the heart of "Judgment of the Grave," and that is all right with me because it allows Sweeney to focus on her strengths in terms of historical research. Sweeney might not solve the case, but once again she finds the key piece of evidence.
Once again Taylor tweaks my interest early on in her novel by touching on something I find fascinating, which in this case would be reenactors. I have been to some Civil War reenactments and while trudging up the Freedom Trail in Boston towards the Bunker Hill monument, walking past the Copp's Hill Burial Ground, we past a reenactor dressed up as a British Redcoat. Sweeney is in the South Burying Ground in Concord studying the work of a colonial stonecutter, Josiah Whiting, when she meets up with one of his descendants, 12-year-old Pres Whiting, who has been undergoing chemotherapy. Her concern for the young boy leads Sweeney to follow him home, but along the way Pres discovers the corpse of someone dressed up in a Revolutionary War uniform.
Meanwhile, back in Boston, Quinn has been assigned to a missing person case involving a history professor who up in Concord for a Minuteman reenactment. You might be inclined to think that Quinn's missing person and the corpse discovered by Pres would be one in the same. But that is far too obvious for a Sweeney St. George mystery. Besides, it turns out that there are other questions to be asked about Josiah Whiting than why the carvings on his gravestones changed before he disappeared and was presumed killed somewhere on Battle Road as the British regulars retreated from Concord back to Boston. After all, you should never presume anything in one of these novels but pay attention to everything because it could be a clue and then, when Quinn and Sweeney start eliminating clues and suspects, make you best guess as to who did it.
I am always in the ballpark with these mysteries, but I never quite put them together, which is like riding in the curl of the wave with these novels. You do not want the solutions to be so obvious that you do not enjoy the story, nor do you want to be so far behind that you lose the sense of participating in solving the crimes. So as far as I am concerned Taylor is doing it just right. Granted, it is easy for me to identify with Sweeney's vocation, but I also think she has a much broader appeal than to readers who share my admittedly eclectic tastes.
Finally, I can understand that some readers will be bothered by the fact that Sweeney is dealing more with her personal life than with the mysteries at hand, but I see the net effect being keeping the character real, especially after having read all three novels in a fortnight. Besides, in her second novel Taylor spent more time developing the supporting characters and I can appreciate the desire not to discard all of them when she gets to the final page. But I always find what Sweeney is researching to be interesting without any corpses being part of the equation. In fact, if Taylor wanted to do an entire mystery in which all of the dead and all of the evidence was in the past and not the present that would be fine with me.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cannot wait for the next book!, April 22, 2006
Sarah Stewart Taylor gets better and better.
This was a very interesting mystery. Great setting. Intriguing characters.
I love the historical beginnings of her books.
Any prospective reader, however, should start with O Artful Death, proceed to Mansions of the Dead and then Judgement of the Grave. You have to develop your interest along with the characters to understand who they are and how they interact. The characters are so very real the reader begins to care about them.
LOVED IT!!!!!!!!
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