Mansions of the Dead

It is SO nice (and alas, so rare) to find a "new" mystery author to follow! Taylor's books combine all the ingredients: a strong, likeable, three-dimensional heroine; plots that keep the pages turning; a sense of place and setting; and (an added bonus) fascinating information topics I'd never considered studying. Consider this one of my rare raves. Red-haired Sweeney St. George (a great name!) teaches a class on mourning objects at an unnamed Boston area university. One of her graduate seminar students is murdered and pieces of mourning jewelry are found on his person. Are these objects clues to the killer? Sweeney gets invited to help the police, including a complex officer Quinn with troubles of his own. We get glimpses of Sweeney's own troubled past, which helps her understand the family of the dead man. She digs into historical records and gets tempted by a young man who's very much alive. My only quibble is the author's references to Sweeney's college teaching career. We get hints that Sweeney's friend helped her get what amounts to an insecure, adjunct teaching position. But even with a friend pulling strings, art history positions are scarce, especially if a professor specializes in arcane areas. And as a former professor myself, I would urge Sweeney to create more distance between herself and her students. She can't sit on the floor of her office with a male graduate student --- not in the 21st century. She can't intrude on their private lives. And we get only a hint of Sweeney's teaching load, which probably included a section or two of Art History 101 or at the very least, Introduction to American Art. Minor points. I loved this book. I wasn't a bit tempted to peek ahead and I was sorry to see the end. Write fast, Ms. Taylor! We need a long series here.

For me the chief charm of Sarah Stewart Taylor's Sweeney St. George is not as an amateur sleuth but as a college art professor with a specialty in cemetery statuary, graveyard iconography, and mourning rituals. Given a choice between being in the room when she reveals the identity of the murderer or taking her Mourning Object seminar, or even Looking at Culture: Art and Social History, sign me up for the latter. I do not have anything close to Taylor's expertise on such things, but I certainly have the interest. So when Sweeney starts explaining the origin of mourning jewelry as it relates to the death of both Queen Victoria's mother and husband as well as the American Civil War I am just fascinated. However, "Mansions of the Dead" is a murder mystery and not a seminar paper, although the two are linked. Because of her expertise on mourning jewelry Sweeney is asked by the Boston police to look at some pieces found on a dead body. Sweeney obliges but is rocked when she learns that the victim was Brad Putnam, one the students in her seminar. That not only means that this time it is personal, but also that it is political, because Brad is one of "the" Putnams, a Kennedy-like clan in terms of not only their wealth and connections, but also in the way that personal tragedy has touched their family. The elements that we enjoyed in "O' Artful Death" are once again all present in Taylor's second novel. Sweeney's expertise gives her insights into a murder investigation that leads to an entirely different path of evidence and reasoning than what is being pursued by the police. She has questions, a lot of questions, and this habit of continuing to question the answers she gets to the original questions. There is always a paragraph in one of these novels where Sweeney asks herself a half-dozen questions in a row, which I like, because it means she is getting serious. There is also the vacuum of Sweeney's love life, as she tries to move towards filing the vacuum in her life left by Colm's death, and finds herself drawn to someone who intrigues her but has the downside of being a suspect in the murder at hand. What is different is that Taylor has made a concerted effort to flesh out the rest of the characters in the story. Everybody in the Putnam clan has a chapter or two in which we get to find out what they are up to away from Sweeney's investigation, and the same applies to some of Sweeney's students and Detective Timothy Quinn, whose home situation is not really germane to this mystery but which may (or may not) portend something down the road for our heroine, assuming that future adventures take place in the greater Boston area and not in other parts of New England (although a friend on the police will certainly not hurt). Some of this is character development and part of it is clues, which means red herrings are involved as well, but clearly Taylor is trying to expand the scope of her storytelling. Again, "Mansions of the Dead" is

Sarah Stewart Taylor's Mansions of the Dead, is a very well crafted, insightful novel reflecting the long lost comfort and fascination that earlier generations had with death and the hereafter. She reveals her skill and knowledge of the "death arts" while unwinding a modern day tale of murder and secrets kept by those whose money and social privilege gave occasion to lies, mystery and misfortune. She is skillful at drawing all the essential elements together, revealing the stark reality of murder, commited for reasons not unlike many before and since; power and position. I look forward to her next venture!

Once again, Sarah Stewart Taylor sucked me into a mystery, and I am not a mystery reader. But I love the way she writes, I find it fascinating that the story revolves around mourning jewelry, and the story just sweeps me away--so much so that I ditched an entire day of a planned vacation just to lay on a blanket in the park and finish the book. I couldn't help myself. I loved her last book, too, but this one even more so. The writing is so luxurious that before I knew it two hours had passed and I was completely captured by the story. It was, for me, the perfect way to spend a vacation. Now I can't wait for the third book in this series!

When Sweeney St. George is asked by the police to help identify some mourning jewelry found on a murder victim's body, she never dreams that the victim was also one of her students. Brad Putnam was quite interested in burial customs and Sweeney really liked him. Naturally, she is quite upset when she learns of his death.Brad was a member of a powerful and well known family in Boston whose influence goes back generations. As Sweeney helps the police, she finds herself drawn into other aspects of the case. Why was the jewelry left on Brad? What was he so upset about the night he was killed? And does it have anything to do with his research for her class?I enjoyed Ms. Taylor's debut mystery and was looking forward to this book as well. I wasn't disappointed. Sweeney is as interesting a character as before, and I find her knowledge of burial and mourning customs fascinating. The plot is well paced with clues and red herrings scattered throughout. Since this book focuses on the past of only one family, I had an easier time keeping the historic characters straight this time around. I must admit to being a little confused as to why one sub-plot was in the story, but it was an interesting balance to one of the characters. The book is slightly darker then much of what I read, but I really enjoyed it for a change of pace. The writing style in engaging, inviting the reader in and making it hard to put the book down.With a fresh writing style, interesting main character with a unique interest, and intricate plot, this is a series not to be missed.