Still as Death

July 10, 2006
The fourth mystery to feature art historian Sweeney St. George (after 2005's Judgment of the Grave
) is every bit as riveting as the previous installments in Taylor's series. The opening of a funerary art exhibit at Boston's Hapner Museum of Art goes swimmingly, until the museum's housekeeper is found murdered—it seems she interrupted an attempted heist. The circumstances of her death recall a still unsolved theft that took the same museum by surprise more than two decades earlier. Sweeney and her detective friend, Tim Quinn, wonder if the two events are connected. Meanwhile, Sweeney herself is feeling oddly down in the dumps—she'd been planning this exhibit for three years, and she's not sure what to do with herself now. But instead of jumping at the chance to move to London with her live-in beau, she finds herself occasionally daydreaming about Quinn. Cozy fans will eagerly await Taylor's next offering. Regional author tour.

September 1, 2006
Funerary art expert Sweeney St. George is curating an exhibition at a Harvard University museum when one of the museum workers is murdered during the show's opening. The police shut down the building, which gives Sweeney time to investigate the murder and to find an ancient Egyptian burial necklace missing from the museum's collection. In her fourth outing (after "Judgement of the Grave"), Sweeney is unfocused, and her indecisiveness hurts more than one person. While not the strongest entry in Taylor's well-received series, it moves the reader along to a nicely plotted ending. For larger collections. Taylor lives in Vermont.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2006
Sweeney St. George, funerary art expert and amateur sleuth, has a problem: one of the key pieces of an exhibit she's curating for a Harvard art museum has gone missing. When she tries to find it, Sweeney discovers that a student who had been researching the missing piece died under suspicious circumstances. And, as (bad) luck would have it, she, too, stumbles on the same information that got that young man killed. To save herself, Sweeney must solve a two-decades-old murder. The fourth St. George mystery displays all the wit and charm of its predecessors. Unlike some other series leads, it's not just Sweeney's name that sets her apart: in a genre full of amateur sleuths, she sparkles with originality. The series has been around long enough now to comfortably predict it'll have a nice long run. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)