Artifacts
A Faye Longchamp Mystery by Mary Anna Evans
Review: Mary Anna Evan's first book, Artifacts, introduces Faye Longchamp, an archaeology student who finds herself enmeshed in a murder mystery while trying to save her ancestral home.
This is an exceptional mystery filled with fascinating and original characters and unique settings. Evans' attention to detail is extraordinary, but never gets in the way of the story. Her effective use of historical narratives scattered throughout serve multiple purposes, not the least of which as clues to the mystery.
Artifacts is possibly the best mystery by a new author published this year, and should be a part of every mystery reader's collection.
Acknowledgment: Poisoned Pen Press provided an ARC of Artifacts for this review.
Review Copyright © 2003 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Selected reviews of other mysteries by this author …
Relics
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), August 2005
ISBN-13: 9781590581193; ISBN-10: 1590581199
Location(s) referenced in Artifacts: Florida
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Artifacts by Mary Anna Evans
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 1-59058-056-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-056-1
Publication Date: April 2003
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from the publisher): Faye Longchamp has lost nearly everything except for her quick mind and a grim determination to hang onto her ancestral home, Joyeuse, a moldering plantation hidden along the Florida coast. No one knows how Faye’s great-great-grandmother Cally, a newly freed slave barely out of her teens, came to own Joyeuse in the aftermath of the Civil War. No one knows how her descendants hung onto it through Reconstruction, world wars, the Depression, and Jim Crow, but Faye has inherited the island plantation — and the family tenacity. When the property taxes rise beyond her means, she sets out to save Joyeuse by digging for artifacts on her property and the surrounding National Wildlife Refuge and selling them on the black market. A tiny bit of that dead glory would pay a year’s taxes. A big valuable chunk of the past would save her home forever.
But instead of potsherds and arrowheads, she uncovers a woman’s shattered skull, a Jackie Kennedy-style earring nestled against its bony cheek. Faye is torn. If she reports the forty-year-old murder, she’ll reveal her illegal livelihood, thus risking jail and the lose of Joyeuse. She doesn’t intend to let that happen, so she probes into the dead woman’s history, unaware that the past is rushing up on her like a hurricane across deceptively calm Gulf waters.