Judgment of the Grave: A Sweeney St. George Mystery

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!

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!!!!!!!!

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 th

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

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!!