Mesozoic Murder [Paperback]

Christine Gentry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2003

Ansel Phoenix makes her living drawing dinosaurs for magazines, books, and museum displays. One morning, digging with students out in the field, she unearths the body of colleague and ex-lover Nick Capos. Shocked and grieved over the murder, Ansel is also distraught on a professional level. As president of the Pangaea Society, an esteemed paleontology organization to which the murdered botanist also belonged, Ansel must fight to preserve the society's reputation when unsavory facts about its scientists--dead and alive--are revealed.
Not trusting the Big Toe police who've an axe to grind with her father, Ansel decides to investigate what Capos had been doing during the last few months of his life and soon suspects he was working on a secret project worth killing for. Her list of possible suspects grows by the hour as someone starts stalking her across the Montana landscape. This master predator will stop at nothing to keep her from discovering...what? Why is Nick's fossil collection missing and why had he developed a recent interest in Baltic amber?
Ansel must also deal with the cultural challenges of her own half-Anglo, half-Blackfoot heritage, her ranching family, and the changes threatening their rural community while using her intuitive fossil-sleuthing skills to solve more than one Mesozoic mystery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sometimes it seems as if there's almost too much meat on Gentry's debut, a juicy Montana mystery introducing Ansel Phoenix, who draws dinosaurs for a living. To her Indian heritage (she's half-Blackfoot), Ansel adds artistic skills and scientific knowledge plus professional standing as president of the Pangaea Society, "a non-profit, community-based organization devoted to the study of fossils." A traumatic childhood incident has left Ansel sensitive to slights over her Indian blood but proud of her heritage. On a fossil-hunting field trip with a group of students, Ansel finds the grave of a recently murdered colleague and former lover, Nick Capos. Unwilling to reveal her past involvement and distrustful of the police, Ansel decides on her own to try to solve Capos's murder. The author grounds the story in plenty of science (nothing too complicated) and Native American culture and lore. As Ansel learns more about the victim, she also begins uncovering disquieting facts about other members of the Pangaea Society. Her unwelcome investigations lead to warnings, threats and ultimately physical abuse. Gentry's appealing heroine, who gets ample opportunity to display her resourcefulness and fortitude, and the intriguing milieu in which she operates, should ensure both a warm reception and a speedy encore.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Christine Gentry grew up in Maryland with her fraternal twin sister where she spent the summers fishing and crabbing along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. She has a Psychology degree and worked for Waldenbooks for twenty years. Christine’s publications include magazine articles plus fiction and nonfiction books. She has also taught courses in freelance writing and police report writing to law enforcement officials. She lives in Florida and is working on her second Ansel Phoenix mystery.

Product Details

• Paperback: 279 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; US trade ed edition (August 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590583884
• ISBN-13: 978-1590583883
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,871,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A nice mystery, September 5, 2003

By 

"mysterysuite" (McHenry, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mesozoic Murder (Hardcover)

Ansel Phoenix, dinosaur illustrator & president of the Pangaea Society, takes three students out on a field seminar to find fossils. They are shocked when they unearth a dead body-that of Ansel's colleague, Nick Capos. Ansel tries to do damage control for the Society. A $300,000 memorial gift is just about to be transferred to the Society for the construction of the Preston Opel Paleohistory Center in a dual partnership with the Montana Musuems Association and now the MMA is making noise about the bad publicity resulting from Nick's murder. The Society's constantly bickering membership does not help Ansel's quest. And the publicity gets worse when another Society member is murdered in the same fashion as Nick. In the meanwhile, Ansel gets permission from Nick's widow to appraise his fossil collection. But the fossil collection is missing from his apartment. Even more puzzling, Nick had developed a sudden interest in Baltic amber and had been working on a secret after-hours project at the Roosevelt Museum. Attacked in her own home by a masked man who insists she knows more than she actually does, Ansel starts looking for answers without the blessing of Lieutenant Reid Dorbandt, assigned to the murder cases. Mesozoic Murder is essentially a decent mystery with a mediocre ending. The murderer's motives seems weak and the murderer isn't hard to guess by process of elimination. Ansel makes an interesting protagonist but her constant charge of bigotry to everyone and sundry may get tiresome & it makes her sound like an ornery child that needs to grow up. However, I still recommend this book and look forward to reading another installment.

Also recommended: Other archeology-themed mysteries: Lara McClintock series by Lyn Hamilton; Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters: Emma Fielding series by Dana Cameron

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars See review for Carnosaur Crimes, August 1, 2010

By 

andiesenji (SoCal,USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Mesozoic Murder (Kindle Edition)

I managed to real all of this book but was constantly annoyed by the behavior of the protagonist.

It's one thing to be proud of one's ethnic heritage but yet another to make that a reason to think one knows better than authorities.
I was quite angry at the end of this story - much of the damage was the fault of the protagonist.