Customer Reviews

Past Malice (Emma Fielding Mysteries, No. 3)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I jumped into the middle of the "Emma Fielding" series with this book, and now will have to go back and read the two previous books and then move forward with Emma.

Dr. Emma Fielding is an archeologist who, in this mystery, is excavating the grounds of a colonial-era house on the coast of Massachusetts. Emma lives not far from the site with her husband; staying with her are some students who are helping with the excavation as well as her younger sister Bucky, who wants to see what Emma does as an archeologist.

Although Emma assures tourists that she does not expect to find any skeletons (one of the questions she gets tired of answering), she arrives at the site one morning to find a murdered employee near the excavation site. Does the murder have anything to do with her work, or with the house, or is it unrelated to both? Needless to say, Emma gets involved in solving the mystery -- to the irritation of her husband, who fears the next body found may be his wife's. It is a well-justified concern, as it turns out.

QUite a bit of the book (too much, im my opinion, but I guess it's a matter of taste) deals with Emma's relationships with her husband and younger sister. This is probably the part of the book I thought could have been edited more, since I found myself getting a little tired of the fighting and mutual irritation and wished the author would get back to the historic building and the murder mystery.

The archeological and historical parts were quite interesting, and Cameron describes everything vividly, so that you can imagine everything clearly as you read. There are a host of characters, but it's not difficult to keep them all straight. The quality of writing is excellent and the plotting good, although I must say that I questioned whether the motive for the murder was adequate.

All in all, a mystery well worth reading, particularly for those interested in history and/or archeology!

The Stone Harbor Historical Society wants to build a gift house with bathrooms on the grounds of Chandler Home and they hired archeologist Emma Fielding to set up a site where they want to dig. Emma plans to identify any archeological remains and to learn more about the Chandler family who was a power in the community in the early eighteenth century. Emma lives in nearby Lawton, Massachusetts so this summer dig is an easy commute for her.

The site yields some good artifacts when Emma and her students find the dead body of the security guard. The police temporary halt work at the site so Emma spends time with her sister. The police permit the dig to continue but immediately close it down again when the body of Aden Fiske, the head of the Historical Society is found. When Emma starts asking questions, she discovers that Aden had many enemies. However, the killer goes to far when her sister is poisoned.

The heroine of PAST MALICE is a very likable character who loves her husband and sister more than she does the job. She makes compromises to keep her husband satisfied that she isn't putting herself in danger and is ready to listen to her sister when she is ready to talk about her man troubles. She learns the secrets of the town, which places her in danger from a killer who will go to any lengths to keep them buried. While the story line is fast-paced and exciting it is the heroine who makes this a book to remember.

Harriet Klausner

Four and a half, really. It's not quite perfect - there's one or two coincidences too many - but it's quite good.

I started reading this series with this book, then had to go back and get the others, to get all of the context. It's a good series, but it definitely makes more sense read in order. In the first volume, Brian and Emma don't have a house yet, and Emma has just started working with Meg. Kamil and Marty meet in the first book. If you start with this (the third book), you have no idea of what all the references are to past trouble that they've seen together, and there are many such references. So do go ahead and get Site Unseen and Grave Consequences.

A tiny nitpick is that Cameron's police seem to blur together; it's hard to tell the fairly intelligent cop in one volume from a different cop in the other. Not that it's a bad thing - it's a nice change of pace from other authors' series where all the police are buffoons all the time!

The relationship between archaeologist Emma and her chemist husband Brian is well-described; it includes a realistic view of why many archaeologists, in real life, don't have successful marriages. (I hear from zoologists, too, that they have the same problems. They are both in professions that require a lot of field work, often in dangerous places. If one's spouse isn't disgruntled that one is away from home so often, then he or she is disgruntled that the other throws himself or herself into danger just for the sake of a find, all too often.)

Emma is at a site fairly close to home, in this one; her student assistants are staying at her house, and she and they drive to the site each day. This has its advantages and its disadvantages for Brian. We get to hear a little bit more about mealtimes than I personally found interesting, but your tastes may vary (pardon the pun).

There are relatively few bodies in this one, compared to the first in the series. There are the usual cast of eccentrics - the neighbors, the Bellamys, are stuck up and trying to get the dig shut down; there's someone far too concerned with whether his ancestry is perfect. There aren't any out and out nutsos such as Tichnor in the first book, which is fine with me - authors who depend on crazy people for motives all the time are lazy, I feel, so it's nice to have good old-fashioned greed instead.

Emma's sister Bucky is visiting, and she joins in on the field work; she's a nice character, a veterinarian with some gaps in her social skills. We get some development in the relationship between the sisters, and learn a bit more about their family history. (As Emma has pointed out, their mother's personality may be why neither Emma nor Bucky is much of a people person, Emma preferring to work with dead people and Bucky preferring to work with animals. I can understand that!)

As usual, you'll learn something about archaeology and something about architecture in New England, along with learning who dunnit!

I'm an English teacher, and therefore will pretty much give any book a chance. I must say, I want the time I spent reading this book back, because it was totally not worth my time. I would have rather graded papers, and that's saying a lot. The author has this ability to explain every single minute detail, which does no more than unnecessarily prolong the novel. Seriously, this book could have been 100 pages shorter, if the author had not added in so much extra random stuff. I was about 40% through the story and still had no idea what the actual mystery was about, had no suspects, or any motive for why two characters were dead. All in all, I'm definitely not giving any other stories in this series the time of day.

Emma Fielding is an archaeologist who is working a the 18th century Chandler House in Stone Harbor, MA. The mix of tourists, fisherman, and artists who are attracted to the community is not an easy mix.
Artifacts are not what Emma finds at her site. When a member of the Stone Harbor Historical Society turns up dead at the excavation Emma has more troubles than the naysayers who don't want holes in their backyards.
With fun and grace the adventures of Emma Fielding make a great read.
Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS

First I'd like to say that the archaeological information was refreshingly correct and that I enjoyed some of the insights into how it feels to have the general public misunderstand the profession. As a professional archaeologist, I've often experienced many similar emotions in response to public comments but Ms. Cameron presents them in an amusing way that doesn't come across as condescending.

I thought that the book was well written, engaging, and that the main characters were well developed. However, the book left me hanging on too many threads of the story line at the end. First of all, the 18th mysteries were more interesting to me than the modern day murders and there is no resolution to those. Now I realize that's not how real archaeology works. Rarely do we get definitive answers in a span of time as brief as that covered in this book. However, I read fictional mysteries about archaeology to escape the sometimes mundane realities of the field. If I want real life archaeology where the end result usually reveals more questions than answers, I'll read a professional journal.

Finally, I felt that the motive for the murders wasn't adequately explained. In the end we know why the victim was blackmailing almost everyone in town except for the murderer. I'll probably, read another in the series. Ms. Cameron is an engaging writer and perhaps the resolution to the next book will be more satisfying.

The Chandler House is an object of interest. It is an archaeological dig and a property of the historical society. The chief character here is Emma Fielding, a professor at a college in Maine. The location of the story is the Massachusetts coast.

The manager of the Chandler site is Aden Fiske. Emma's sister Bucky is to spend a vacation with Emma and her husband, Brian Chang. Archaeology demands early hours. Emma discovers a body at the site, the young watchman, Justin. Emma instructs her students, Joe, Meg, Dian, and Rob to remain in their cars while she summons the police. After a two-day hiatus, work at the dig resumes.

One of the guides explains to Emma that the historical society is window dressing covering a lack of achievement, a loss of face, a loss of family funds and prestige for the members. Looking for a missing tarp, Emma discovers yet another body, that of Aden Fiske. It is learned that Aden Fiske used blackmail against many of the members of the society and the townspeople.

Emma climbs up to the roof of the house via scaffolding to take pictures of the holes of the dig. The scaffolding is removed by someone, indicating that someone wants to harm her. The book is intelligent, revealing. Old names, history make quite a stew.

Like most of the reviewers of these books and this series, I will most probably go back and read these books again.I wanted to give the author a fair chance to see what level of skill her writing is on. One book is not enough to base my opinions on usually, and since there were no other glaring problems that needed to be fixed, I want to try Cameron again. In a different field that usually seen in books like this mystery, Cameron's sleuth is a woman who literally digs up the past. She doesn't just dig up the body which would be mostly skelaton if in open, adicoper...she digs up the evidence left by a civilization. When a body is found on the site of an older dig that is being excavated for scientic reason, enough evidence is left to indicate this more recent death is due to more sinister reasons than given, and for more recent reasons.

Emma's family and her 'kids' who are there to work with her on this excavaction are dragged into this work from the time they find the first body. By the time they find the find the second body Emma is starting to wonder whether the 'bodies' are dead because of Emma or because of what she is finding under the ground. That leaves her in a predicament, because she just cannot up and leave when ever she feels like it.

Cameron uses a lot of stunts to lengthen the story like inserting her own opinion about the material she is finding.I find that annoying and hope this is just a one-time thing. The writing isn't that bad, but I feel that this author has more in them to give.

Karen Sadler

Archaeologist Emma Fielding and her student crew are working on a dig at the eighteenth century Chandler House in Massachusetts. Neighbors are not very happy about the dig, especially when they find two separate murders. These aren't old bones from past murders, these are freshly slain corpses.

Emma's students are staying with her and her husband at their home not too far from the dig. This can prove interesting with so many people in one house. Plus Emma's sister has come to visit. Another complication.

Emma gets herself into some scary situations in her attempts to figure out whether the deaths are related to the museum or the dig. There are lots of interesting characters in the town and plenty of dark forces to keep the mystery going.

While I liked the archeological information and the many characters, for some reason I feel this book was a slow read. It wasn't something I kept picking up to finish. Not really sure why. I like Emma and the other characters. I think this was a good story. Just something about the flow.

I recommend this book.