Mansions of the Dead
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When college student Brad Putnam turns up dead in his bedroom in his Boston apartment, Homicide Detective Timothy Quinn is baffled by the crime scene and decides to seek the help of art history professor Sweeney St. George to make sense of the evidence. An expert on "the art of death," Sweeney immediately identifies the objects found on the body as mourning jewelry-and discovers that she knew the victim. Brad Putnam was taking her class on that very subject.
Sweeney is shocked by Brad's death, and determined to help Detective Quinn unravel the mystery of Brad's death. They soon discover this is not the first tragedy to strike the Putnams, a prominent Boston family. Peter Putnam, Brad's brother, died in a terrible car accident years earlier. But the cause of the accident was never discovered, as the Putnam family covered up what happened and refused to cooperate with the police.
Detective Quinn warns Sweeney not to get too involved in the Brad Putnam investigation but as she gets closer to the Putnam family, she becomes even more determined than ever to find out what happened. Haunted by secrets in her own past, Sweeney dissects the family's history and begins to realize that she may uncover secrets that were never meant to surface.
Sarah Stewart Taylor's intricate and engaging follow-up to her acclaimed Agatha Award finalist debut, O'Artful Death, is an absorbing and suspenseful novel about love and family, secrets and lies-and murder.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Taylor's engrossing second mystery to feature art history professor Sweeney St. George (after 2003's O' Artful Death), one of her students, Brad Putnam, is found dead wearing an odd assortment of mourning jewelry. Called in by Detective Timothy Quinn to help identify the artifacts, Sweeney dates them to the Civil War era and is later fascinated to find irregularities in the birth and death dates of one of Putnam's long dead relatives. Since Brad was the scion of one of Boston's wealthiest and most powerful families, Quinn and the Cambridge, Mass., police department must tread lightly as the family closes ranks just as it did five years earlier when Brad's youngest brother was killed in a car crash. After two hit-and-run incidents come on the heels of Brad's untimely demise, Sweeney and Quinn are convinced the deaths are linked but have no evidence to support their beliefs. Both become immersed in an increasing web of lies, love triangles, politics and money. Sweeney's researches into the cultural mores of death provide an unusual backdrop, while Tim Quinn is deeply affecting as a young father trying to juggle his work and home lives. More skillfully plotted than O' Artful Death, this moody, atmospheric novel will appeal to fans of darker cozies.
