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Archaeologist Emma Fielding is working at Chandler House in Stone Harbor, Massachusetts. The house is owned by the local Historical Society and Emma is both trying to identify what happened in its past history and determine whether the society can build a guest shop where there are no archaeological remains. It is summer and Emma has students with her learning and doing the work. Her veterinarian sister Bucky is visiting for a few days and that puts some strain on her. Strange things are happening in the town. There has been vandalism at another site and then one of the Board members is the victim of a hit-and-run driver. If this isn't bad enough, a security guard is murdered and another member of the Board also becomes a victim. Emma is trying to stay out of the investigation but she cannot. As the cop reminds her, archaeology is too much like detective work for her to simply let the police do their jobs. This brings problems with her husband, Brian. Of course he does not like her to be in a situation of danger and it is beginning to look like the site is exactly that. Conversely she does not take orders well at all and is disturbed that her husband thinks he has the right to give orders. But when she stupidly puts herself in danger, she has to agree that Brian may well be right. It doesn't help that her sister Bucky seems to understand Brian better than she does. Emma is a very well developed character and her interplay with her husband and her sister seems very believable. The other characters are more two-dimensional, especially Claire Bellamy who seems like an irrational opponent of everything. She has her reasons, however. It's not that the characters are unbelievable, just that they are not completely developed. It is fascinating to me to learn more about archaeology. Every site is different and Cameron describes how the students work and sort and classify and how Emma has to see the overall picture and interpret what the students are discovering. Because history is at the heart of archaeology, the history of the local, the specific as Emma says, we also learn about one family in one Massachusetts town that better helps us understand the wider society in which they lived. The plot is not too complicated. Emma is not trying to discover a murderer but because she has specialized knowledge and happens upon more she is able to determine the reason for the murder and then the murderer him/herself. Probably any reader who tried really hard could figure out the murderer. I don't try. This is indeed a character driven book. If you believe that relationships and showing how people get along with each other and how each grows in relation to the other belong in crime novels, then you will enjoy this book. If these sorts of things bother you, perhaps you may want to pick up a different novel. One of my very favorite quotations comes from this book: ". . .I was still surprised that people only wanted money for books. Not body parts or firstborns or souls. Just money. It always seemed like a steal to me."
Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, June 2003
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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