Review Rating
With the October 2004 review, we began rating the books on the basis of one to four trowels;
one trowel= don’t bother, to four trowels= run right out to your local book store and buy the hard cover!
Golden Oldies - reviewing previously unreviewed books by previously reviewed “greatest hits” authors!
As we approach nearly twenty-five years of the MVAC reviews of archaeological fiction, I thought it would be fun to re-visit six of the authors whose works have been reviewed in the past. Three of these authors have sadly passed away since I first reviewed them (Margot Arnold, Lynn Hamilton, and Elizabeth Peters); two have “retired” their archaeologist protagonists, Gideon Oliver (Aaron Elkins), and Emma Fielding (Dana Cameron); and one, (Kate Ellis) continues to put DI Wesley Peterson and his friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, in harm’s way as solve contemporary crimes that have their roots in the distant past. While these authors have been reviewed previously, these books have not.
An Unhallowed Grave (Golden Oldie) by Kate Ellis
Reviewed on: December 1, 2025
St. Martin Minotaur Press: New York
2001 (HC)
Kate Ellis has been writing the Wesley Peterson “crime novels” since 1998, employing the same literary convention throughout: Police detective Wesley Peterson solves a contemporary crime that in one way or another is linked to an archaeological investigation conducted by his old friend, Neil Watson. While this convention would, after time, seem to become tired and repetitive, Ms. Ellis is a very skilled writer and has more than managed to keep each new entry in the series fresh and imaginative. For this “throwback” review—as we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of these monthly reviews, we look back to an early entry in the series, An Unhallowed Grave.
A suspected suicide was found hanging from a yew tree in the churchyard at Stokeworthy, a bucolic little hamlet in Devon. When Detective Inspector Gerry Heffernan and his right-hand man, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson are called to the scene, they quickly determine this is not a suicide, but rather a brutal murder, with the victim, identified as Pauline Brent, strangled before being cruelly strung up. The investigating team determines that the victim had lived in the village for several years and was a quiet, well-liked middle-aged woman who worked as a receptionist in the local physician’s office. She was a woman who, in classic British understatement “kept herself to herself.”
The investigation brings to light a small, typical English village in the throes of major changes, both demographic and physical. Day-trippers and weekenders are buying up property and developers are building new housing to meet these urban demands. Chief among this latter group is nouveau riche tycoon/developer Philip Thewlis, who has plan for domestic and commercial develop on his vast land holdings around Stokeworthy Manor, his recently acquired home, which dated back to the Middle Ages and had served as a municipal center and local courtroom hundreds of years earlier. In order to proceed with these developments, Thewlis hired County Archaeologist Neil Watson and a crew of excavators to conduct a survey excavation of the grounds. Reuniting with his old “mate” Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson (they had been classmates studying archaeology in college) over drinks in the local pub, Neil notes that the big yew tree from which Pauline had been hanged was used for public executions in the distant past. When the archaeology crew unearths the remains of a young woman, very likely lynched from the same churchyard yew tree hundreds of years earlier, but her body moved to unhallowed ground beneath an adjacent crossroads, it appears that distant past and the contemporary present begin to merge. Further excavating reveal a veritable treasure trove buried very near the unfortunate young woman: medieval church treasures of the highest artistic quality imaginable.
Wesley’s skills at detection are challenged to the utmost as numerous suspects, among them the local clergyman, a seemingly haunted artist, a thoroughly disliked day-tripper, a local candidate for Parliament, and even the high-rolling property developer, all seem to have had the opportunity, means and perhaps even motive to kill the apparently innocent victim, Pauline Brent. A second apparent murder, that of a young village miscreant who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time further muddies the waters of the police investigation. The further discovery that Pauline Brent was almost assuredly not what she seemed to the people of Stokeworthy seemed to put in question every assumption the police investigators had drawn up to that point. But Wesley discovers that the key to solving the contemporary crime lies in the solving of transgressions committed in the distant past. For while the means of carrying out murder may differ over the ages, the motives—the human inclination to commit heinous acts—may remain astonishingly consistent. Ms. Ellis deftly spins her tale of murder most foul while joyously scattering red herrings galore to confound her readers. She will leave readers guessing almost literally to the last page. Four trowels for An Unhallowed Grave.
