Synopses & Reviews
TO TREAD WHERE MALICE LINGERS...While most travel to Concord, Massachusetts to relive America's Revolutionary past, Harvard professor Sweeney St. George has come looking for a different sort of history. An expert on funerary art, she roams the local cemeteries, fascinated by the macabre carvings of a celebrated stonecutter and hero of the Revolution--a project that takes a strange turn when a man dressed in a uniform of 1775 is found murdered in the nearby woods.
IN MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD
With police suspecting that the victim may be a missing Cambridge scholar who had been researching the very same historical figure as Sweeney, the investigation draws her in. Now, searching for clues in the weathered stone markers of the dearly departed, and with the help of a precocious twelve-year-old boy and Cambridge police detective Tim Quinn, Sweeney St. George closes in on a 230-year-old enigma--and a desperate killer without remorse.
"Pull up an overstuffed chair and drift away."
--Chicago Tribune
"Seductive...poignant."
--Mystery Lovers Bookshop
Review
"Engaging...[a] richly textured tale."--
Publishers Weekly
"A tale that will keep you reading...a complicated plot with many twists and turns, red herrings awaits the reader...talented Sarah Stewart Taylor writes a well-constructed tale with realistic characters set in a well-drawn background."--Newmysteryreader.com
"Unlike a number of mystery writers who seem to have been reared on television and forget often that a setting must be described, Taylor gives the reader a real sense of what Concord and its graveyards look like. And enough false leads appear to keep the reader guessing and reading on."
--Washington Times
"Well-paced and well-plotted, with plenty of twists and revelations...[a] complex, interesting, historically-flavored novel...a nice, tight puzzle."--Iloveamysterynewsletter.com
Synopsis
As gravestone expert Sweeney St. George tours burial sites of the Civil War, she stops to watch a battlefield reenactment in Massachusetts. There, she meets Pres Whiting, a boy whose family is in the gravestone business. When Pres discovers a dead man in a Revolutionary War-era British soldier's uniform, Sweeney and Cambridge homicide detective Tim Quinn jump on the case.
While they search for clues regarding the dead body, Sweeney and Quinn investigate other strange events. While Sweeney looks into the 1775 disappearance of militiaman, Quinn looks into a current missing persons case with alarming ties to the past. As they try to uncover how their own investigations are related to the body found in the woods, Sweeney and Quinn get a little too close for comfort -- to each other and to murder.
About the Author
SARAH STEWART TAYLOR is the author of two previous mysteries that feature Sweeney St. George, including the Agatha Award finalist
O' Artful Death. She lives with her family in Vermont.