Customer Reviews

Judgment of the Grave (Sweeney St. George Mysteries)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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!!!!!!!!

Why does it seems that in all mysteries, the witnesses, bystanders, etc. practically seem unaffected by the horror of the murder? This is so common that I still give this one 5-stars since, this complaint aside, this is about about good as a comtemparary mystery can get!! We start out here where a 12 year old boy, with cancer, discovers a body in revolutionary war costume, in the woods near a shack, and meets up with our heroine, cemetary and tombstone investigator Sweeney St. George.The resulting mystery is a real puzzler, and interesting Revolutionary War, Concord battle Re-enactors, and Minuteman lore are wonderfully drawn into the story. Having checked out these sites along with the tombstones, I found this sideline as interesting as as the plot! And the solution here was truly fine, not a stretch at all, in fact the most likely motive and circumstance as well, one I did not know till the explanation at the end. So this is a really good mystery, despite my gripe as noted at the beginning of this review!

S.S.T. does it again with her 3rd book!! This is a thouroughly enjoyable read. Taylor continues to develop her characters and her writing style continues to make feel transported to New England. I cannot wait for her fourth book!!

SSTaylor is unique if not interesting. He alter ego Sweeney St.George is a professor who teaches "funerary" art. So how does anyone make a living doing this? Sweeney's dad was a semi-famous artist who committed suicide and left her over one hundred canvases which she is selling off a few at a time. She has had a sad life, loosing her dad and then a man she loved (Colm) to a bombing in Ireland. (Gee, do you get the feeling of death here.)

This story is based in Concord, Massachusetts, and involved a murder during a Revolutionary 'Re-enactment'. What makes the story work is a parallel secret running along with the murder investigation and Sweeney's search for background about a stonecarver/revolutionary war hero from the area. "As I have read in another book, sometimes the first murder, is really the second." Aye, there's the rub (pun intended).

Her involvement with men, always disorderly to say the least, includes a Cambridge Police Detective (with a baby girl who Sweeney babysits for), an English Aristocrat (Ian) and an old platonic boyfriend.

I found the relationship with the detective and his daughter to be a forced, based on the original Sweeney we met in "O'Artful Death". Not to mentions the 10yold boy (Pres) who is dying from leukemia, and becomes Sweeney's 'assistant'. SST is trying to hard to soften her. As is her relationship with Ian, who she met in the last book, and by trying to tie up loose ends with Toby, the old boyfriend.

I know that SST is trying to mold SSt.G into a more rounded character. But, it seems to me like she's trying to hard. The next book in the series is out this September, we'll see how she does. Until then I'll reserve my judgement.

Harvard University Professor Sweeney St. George studies funerary art to include historical gravestones. Currently she is in Concord seeking clues to a Revolutionary War gravestone maker who specialized in unique rounded stones. At a cemetery, she meets twelve years old Pres Whiting, who is bald from chemotherapy. Pres tells her that his family has a grave stone carving business and has had one so since the late eighteenth century.

When Pres struggles to go home, a concerned Sweeney follows him to make sure he is okay. Pres stops when a dog seems overly excited. He follows the canine to see what is going on when he finds the corpse of a man wearing a Revolutionary War reenactment uniform that includes a hole in his stomach. Pres shows Sweeney whose friend Cambridge Detective Tim Quinn investigates the homicide. Sweeney and Pres help him, but concentrate more on the disappearance of a minuteman in 1775.

In her third appearance, the heroine provides an interesting look at graveyard art while in the background Sweeney and Quinn try to resolve two mysteries. Pres is a fabulous preadolescence whose health brings a pale over the who-done-it as the audience and Sweeney pray for a miracle, but doubt one will happen so they settle for Scherezade. As with MANSIONS OF THE DEAD and O'ARTFUL DEATH, Sarah Stewart Taylor provides characters that readers care what happens to them; in this case especially Pres, Sweeney and the General.

Harriet Klausner

The worst of books I have ever read: Too many unbelievable situations like a detective(Quinn) carting a 10-month-old with him wherever he goes including a cemetery and questioning of potential killers; passes her off on a stranger at times (Sweeney who then tosses her to Toby, another stranger); a wife who commits suicide but no explanation as to why. And to make things more ridiculous Sweeney's husband dies tragically. I was so bored but determined to finish it to reveal hopefully an exciting conclusion that had something to do with the revolutionary war and the re enactment.Conclusion had nothing to do with page after page of revolutionary history. Angry because I felt tricked into finishing this worthless novel.

Sarah Stewart Taylor is an extremely talented writer, but all the positive reviews for Judgment of the Grave surprise me. This series is marketed as being about Sweeney, an intelligent, independent woman. In this book she's been demoted to babysitter. She just sort of stumbles around doing research that ends up having nothing to do with anything, babysits a whole lot for a police officer she barely knows after admitting she knows so little about babies she can barely tell a 3-month-old from a 3-year-old (or something like that), then makes a last-minute dash onstage to play a sidekick role while the man cracks the case. As a side note, I don't much like reading about babies with zero personalities (who rarely cry or need any attention) going along in a baby carrier or stroller to interview suspects and check out crime scenes.

I love Concord and love this writer, but this book really missed the mark for me. Her talent still has me wanting to read the next one, though.

Sarah Stewart Taylor is great. In each of her books, she integrates current mysteries with a historical aspect and murder, relating to the current one. This book caught my attention as I read it while in Boston, and had a chance to actually see these same type of gravestones (which are rare in the Midwest!). Well written - I don't want to put any of them down!