QUESTIONABLE REMAINS
By: Beverly Connor
Cumberland House Publishing: Nashville, TN
1997 (HC)
In the late 1990s, Beverly Connor authored five volumes in the
all-too-short-lived Lindsay Chamberlain mystery series. The series heroine
was a charming young archaeologist/forensic anthropologist who taught at the
University of Georgia and would occasionally take on forensic work for law
enforcement authorities. After a brief hiatus from writing, Beverly Connor
returned with the Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation series, several
volumes of which I have reviewed. WIn the late 1990s, Beverly Connor
authored five volumes in the all-too-short-lived hile the Fallon books are
clever and enjoyable, I have always believed that the Lindsay Chamberlain
series was the better of the two and Lindsay the more sympathetic
protagonist.
In this, the second in the Chamberlain series, the
story opens with Lindsay’s expertise and ethics challenged by an outraged
defense lawyer, whose client has been sentenced on the strength of Lindsay’s
expert witness testimony. The outrage is shared by the client’s relatives,
some of whom seem capable of bodily harm or worse against Lindsay. The
threat increases dramatically when the convicted killer escapes.
Even before the courtroom drama, Lindsay has planned a
summer vacation busman’s tour of several Southeastern archaeological digs
being directed by old friends and colleagues, including one being run by her
lover, Derrick Bellamy. The road trip seems like a good idea, if for no
other reason than to Get Lindsay out of harm’s way while the manhunt for the
escapee, Denny Ferguson, is underway. But just before leaving, she is asked
by the local sheriff to examine the remains of a burial discovered on a farm
not far distant from Lindsay’s home. The body in the shallow grave
provides an interesting archaeological puzzle as the Mississippian ear spool
in close context with the body would indicate a Native American burial. But
the remains are more European in nature and few Mississippians were buried
with a rosary! At this point in the story, Beverly Connor introduces the
first of a continuing series of flashbacks that follow the exploits of a 16th
Century Spanish explorer named Roberto Raphael Lacayo, who was captured by
Indians and participated in the hunting down of a brutal conquistadores band
that slaughtered a village of native women and children. Flashbacks are an
often-used literary device in archaeological fiction, but Connor puts it to
interesting use in that Lindsay’s tour of regional dig sites follows the
path of Lacayo, the conquistadores and the Indians and the interpretations
by the archaeologists of the data they are excavating. The flashbacks tell
us what really happened.
Introducing yet a third, seemingly unrelated plotline
to the narrative, the farm wife, on whose property the burial was found,
pleads with Lindsay to use her expertise in finding out the truth about the
tragic death of her younger brother, Ken Darnell, in an apparent caving
accident in northwest Georgia. She believes the postmortem investigation of
her brother’s skeletonized remains was slipshod at best and that her brother
was slain by his wife for insurance money. There is a not so subtle hint
that not all of these separate threads are unrelated when the irate defense
lawyer for the escapee Denny Ferguson turns out to be a close relative of
the farmwife and her deceased brother!
Lindsay finally sets out on her dig sites tour and we
learn that her route follows very closely the route followed by the
marauding conquistadores as they destroyed a village and were then driven to
a neighboring rock shelter by avenging native warriors. The threads of the
two contemporary mysteries—the escaped killer and the dead caver—become even
more entwined when a student fieldworker at the rock shelter site is found
dead under mysterious circumstances and Lindsay discovers that he was also a
caver who had explored with Ken Darnell!
When Lindsay is finally able to study the remains of
Darnell and his two companions, all of whom ostensibly died in the cave-in,
she is forced to question all of the “facts” of the cases surrounding the
escaped prisoner and the dead cave explorers. The merging of the
story lines is a bit contrived, but clever nonetheless, and the
archaeological subtext of the novel is well done. This is not the strongest
of the Lindsay Chamberlain stories, but still worth the read. Two trowels.
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