7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I will definitely read more in this series, April 15, 2004
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!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book to remember., June 12, 2003
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
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good series. Read them in order, though!, April 7, 2004
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!
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