GRAVE CONSEQUENCES
By: Dana Cameron
Avon Books, New York
November 2002 (pb)
Last year I reviewed the first Emma Fielding
archaeology mystery and stated that I hoped we could look forward to a
long and productive career for Dana Cameron as an author.
I am very happy to report that she has, with the recent publication
of Grave Consequences, continued this fledgling series at a very
high level of quality. Once
again she has created believable three-dimensional characters; she has
placed them in an interesting archaeological context—this time it’s a
12th Century Benedictine abbey not far from London; and once
again Emma soon finds herself in the midst of in investigation of forensic
mayhem.
Not long after her arrival at the abbey site, Emma
begins to doubt the wisdom of her willingness to aid a colleague’s
excavation project. One of
the prime objectives of the dig is to discover the burial of the sainted
abbess, Mother Beatrice, a near-mythic character revered by both the
Christian community and New Age Wicca’s.
But the search for Mother Beatrice is nearly eclipsed by the
discovery of a murder victim from the mid-twentieth century and then the
corpse of a very recently murdered young woman had gone missing from the
archaeological crew excavating Marchester Abbey.
With great skill and cunning, Dana Cameron weaves
connecting threads among and between these tragedies.
As in the earlier novel, the author deftly and unobtrusively
demonstrates her understanding and appreciation of the intricacies of
archaeological fieldwork; but even more so than in the earlier Site
Unseen, Ms. Cameron searches the human psyche and the myriad of
motivations that can move reasonably decent people to do unreasonably
indecent actions.
In closing, I can only again say that I anxiously
await the next Emma Fielding mystery!
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