FROM HER NAME (Sweeney St. George) to her avocation (gravestones and funerary art), Taylor's amateur sleuth is one of the more original series leads in the genre. In her third adventure, after Mansions of the Dead (2004) and O' Artful Death (2003), Sweeney's chance encounter with a young boy sparks her interest in the boy's Revolutionary War-era ancestor, a stonecutter and gravestone maker. Coincidentally, Sweeney and the boy also stumble on the body of a murdered man in Revolutionary War clothing near the site of a recent historical reenactment. And, to make things more interesting, it turns out the dead man was writing a book on the boy's stonecutter ancestor. Sweeney and homicide detective Tim Quinn team up to solve the murder and, while they're at it, to close the books on a missing-person case involving a militiaman who vanished more than 200 years ago. Taylor has a lot of fun with her convoluted story, drawing links between past and present while continuing to develop the character of her entertaining and inventive amateur sleuth.
— David Pitt
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