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Title: One Grave Too Many by Beverly Connor ISBN: 0-451-41119-6 Publisher: Onyx Books Pub. Date: 02 December, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: One plot to many ??
Comment: I was a litte disappointed. This book feels as if she wrote it in a hurry and some of the plots are just unbelievable. The heroine, Dr. Diane Fallon, gets beat up two times in this novel and yet she still insists of "i'm going to be fine, just need a full nights sleep alone in my apartment". Is she Indiana Jones or what ?? Also, I could never get into the characters, they were just not outlined enough. That's what I like about Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reich, their heroines are human and clearly outlined with emotions you can almost feel.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not nearly as good as the Lindsay Chamberlain books
Comment: I had waited eagerly for Ms. Connor's newest offering, but I am sorry to say that I disagree with previous reviewers. I found this book to be a disappointment. The writing just isn't as good as in her earlier books. The things that happen are too unbelievable, even for a murder mystery, and the characterizations are contradictory. I won't give anything away, but some of the main character's actions make one wonder whether she is really as smart as her forensic background and position indicate. There are several side stories going on, each of which is more boring than the last except for the titillation of possible violence. The story doesn't seem worth the 383 pages it takes to tell it. Better luck next time!
Rating: 5
Summary: Remember Gideon Oliver? If you liked those, you'll love this
Comment: This appears to be the first in a series, and I will *definitely* buy the next one. This was a great read. Not absolutely perfect, but really really good.
Details: our heroine is a forensic anthropologist turned museum director. If you recall Aaron Elkins' series about Gideon Oliver, the "Bone Detective" then you'll recognize the profession. Diane spent ten years working for an international rights group, identifying mass graves from dictatorships so that the dictators and their henchmen could be prosecuted. In that time, she saw one mass grave too many, and doesn't ever want to deal with human remains again; that's why she accepts a position as the director of a natural history museum. She expects to spend her days dealing with dinosaur bones and extinct giant ground sloths. But bones have a way of finding her.
The details about the museum are great. I suspect that Diane has far more freedom, and things are run more loosely, than they are in real life, but let's face it, all of the exact, real details of the bureaucracy required to run a museum would NOT be exciting reading. A floor plan is given of the museum. I'm a big fan of natural history museums myself; I've been a member of the American Museum of Natural History in New York for decades now. The museum in the book is just outside Atlanta, GA, an area I'm not familiar with, so I don't know what real town our book town of Rosewood most resembles.
There are several plots going on at one time here, with all my favorite sorts of villains and supporting characters - scheming real estate dealers, twisted cops, absent-minded professors, eccentric grad students, classical musicians, and more. Diane's cop friend Frank is a detective for computer and financial fraud, and some of the other police refer to him as a "paper cop." When a family is mass-murdered except for an adopted daughter, the "grandparents" show up, and while they are a little bit stereotyped and less realistic than the others, they are quite funny - it's OK to have a bit of comic relief. Those are the only characters I didn't really like the descriptions of, though.
Another thing that's nice is how many different people help find clues and solve parts of the mystery, and how much our heroine acknowledges and thanks them. When Frank is in the hospital, we meet his brothers. One of them is a sports physician, and when he sees the skeleton Diane is working on, he is able to provide an important insight that helps identify the victim - Diane, living in Georgia and having worked in South America for years, was unlikely to recognize hockey injuries. Some authors make their detective characters so all-knowing on their own that they are somewhat unbelievable; characters are much more believable when they can use some outside help.
There's enough in this book to appeal to the fans of several kinds of mysteries: rivalry between local police, county sheriff's department, and GBI; several unusual professions; classical music; fine arts; taxidermy. There's romance between Diane and Frank, but only a little implied sex, no explicit sex, but there is some "bad" language (several characters curse, pretty much where people would realistically curse, in my opinion) so if you consider the presence of any four-letter words at all to be a negative, you wouldn't be pleased with that. As I said, at the places they curse, they pretty much are saying what would fall out of my mouth under the circumstances; I didn't have a problem at all with it. But some people are more sensitive to such things than others.
I look forward to hearing more about the museum - whether some of the exhibits that Diane plans while she is hiding out in a pond overnight turn out to be popular; future chess games against the nicest of the absent-minded professors, and so on - as well as future clever plots and teamwork.
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Title: Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel by Beverly Connor ISBN: 1581822464 Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: A Fugitive Truth : An Emma Fielding Mystery (Emma Fielding Mysteries) by Dana Cameron ISBN: 0060554622 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: 27 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Airtight Case: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel by Beverly Connor ISBN: 1581822952 Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Skeleton Crew: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel by Beverly Connor ISBN: 1581822871 Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing Pub. Date: 08 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: A Rumor of Bones (Lindsay Chamberlain Mysteries (Paperback)) by Beverly Connor ISBN: 1581821999 Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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