45. O' Artful Death - Sarah Stewart Taylor

For: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Pub: 2003
Pages: 280
Rating: 1.5 (first half) 4 (second half)
Finished: Sept. 2, 2008

I started this book a month ago, on advise from my daughter-in-law. Sweeney St. George is a professor at Harvard, expert in gravestones as well as the lore and history surrounding cemeteries. And a murder mystery to boot. Right up my alley, including a New England setting. But I tried and tried and tried to get into the story. It was painfully slow. Long explanations to set up the scenes. Boring. I kept putting it down. Yet I kept coming back to it, because Heather has mentioned so many times that she really likes Taylor's work. So yesterday, blowing my nose, coughing, uncomforatable, I curled up on my bed with this book, determined to plow through it. I did. I'm glad. The second half was great.

Sweeney accompanies her best fried Toby to Vermont for the Christmas holidays. They stay at his aunt and uncle's huge home in the artist colony of Byzantium. (This so reminds me of the summer colony in Northeast Harbor.) She is fascinated with a gravestone that is beautifully done, a sculpture, actually, unsigned and mysterious. Mary Denholm died in 1890 at the age of 18. Tragic. A mystery to be solved. Was she murdered? Why? Who was the sculptor? At the same time mysterious events are taking place on the "island", including burglaries and not one, but two murders. What's going on? Research follows, at the library, historical society, in Cambridge (ooo, I love it). Even some romance is thrown in, with mysterious Ian from England. Sweeney has a photographic memory and a mind for puzzles. She puts all the clues together and wraps up a mystery that you don't totally see coming.

This is Sarah Stewart Taylor's first book. I'm hoping that it took her awhile to figure out her pacing and that the stories that follow will be more like the second half of this book than the first. I will give the next one a try one of these days. I'm still hacking and coughing, but glad I didn't give up this time. Redemption!