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ONE GRAVE LESS
By: Beverly Connor
Obsidian: New York, NY
2010 (pb)
In this, the ninth entry in Beverly Connor’s “Diane
Fallon Forensic Investigation” series, the reader is taken back to a story
thread established in the very first volume: the disappearance/kidnapping
of Diane’s adopted daughter Ariel in the jungles of South America in the
wake of a massacre master-minded by local dictator Ivan Santos. The setting
for the eight previous mysteries had been the River Trail Museum of Natural
History in Rosewood, Georgia, which also houses the Rosewood law enforcement
forensic laboratory. Diane is director of both entities and the supposedly
“bucolic” nature of the museum was to be a respite for Diane as she sought
to escape the nightmares of Ariel’s disappearance while she was working for
a human rights NGO, World Accord International, as a forensic anthropologist
investigating genocidal events around the world. I put the term bucolic in
quotes as the museum has been the site of mayhem beyond imagination in the
previous eight thrillers!
One Graves Less hints at the outset that Ariel’s
disappearance may present a leading plotline in this latest adventure as
Diane ruminates upon her adopted daughter’s fate as she gazes upon the
reproduction of a Mayan pyramid, designed to highlight a traveling exhibit
of Mesoamerican artifacts from Mexico. She then stumbles upon a bleeding
man—a complete stranger—stabbed nearly to death in the exhibit area. A
telltale trail of blood leads her to her lab where she discovers another
victim—this one very familiar. It is Simone Brooks, a veteran of World
Accord International, who Diane has not seen since the dark days of the
massacre and Ariel’s disappearance. Before lapsing into a nearly
book-length coma, Simone mutters, “one of us, it was one of us. As she
tries valiantly to resuscitate Simone, the EMTs who had responded to their
911 call regarding the knife victim prove to be imposters. They spirit the
stab victim away and try to set the museum ablaze.
One disaster after another befalls Diane in the days to
come. Rumors spread among her museum board members that she was involved in
drug trafficking while doing human rights work in South America; Frank, her
fiancée and a detective with the Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit,
tells her he has been receiving phone calls that she has been “seeing other
men;” Interpol links her to four murders in Brazil; her e-mail is high
jacked and lascivious messages are sent out under her name; and the DEA
begins investigating her, based on a bag (presumably left by the museum
invaders) laced with an ecstasy-type narcotic. Her world seems to be
collapsing around when she begins to receive messages from some of her
former World Accord International colleagues that their reputations are also
suddenly under attack and scrutiny. It is obvious these veterans of the
massacre in the Amazon jungles have serious enemies. But who are they? And
what are their motives?
A second plotline is introduced early in the novel as
an American archaeologist working on an Inca site is kidnapped by bandits
who mistakenly take her to be Diane Fallon. The young American is freed by
a little girl who identifies herself as Ariel Fallon—and she wants to go
home to her mother! Together the archaeologist and the intrepid little girl
work their way back through the jungles, facing wild as well as human
predators, until all the protagonists are joined together back in Rosewood
and the identity of the “one of us” responsible for the massacre of the
innocents years before, as well as many other heinous crimes, is revealed.
This is an entertaining read and continues the solid
body of work Beverly Connor has been building up for the last seven years or
so. Those familiar with her writing may be delighted by the re-introduction
of a character that precedes the Diane Fallon series—a character who, in
this reviewers opinion, is a more sympathetic and fully developed
personality. Beverly Connor’s novels are always engaging although her
narrative style can often be rather plodding and can detract from the fine
plots. Two trowels for the ninth Diane Fallon Forensic Investigation.
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