Still As Death

Marilyn Stasio

This is a tricky mystery, diligently plotted and layered with enough factual detail on museum theft and the illegal international traffic in beautiful objects to satisfy readers who are in it for more than the romance.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

The fourth mystery to feature art historian Sweeney St. George (after 2005's Judgment of the Grave) is every bit as riveting as the previous installments in Taylor's series. The opening of a funerary art exhibit at Boston's Hapner Museum of Art goes swimmingly, until the museum's housekeeper is found murdered-it seems she interrupted an attempted heist. The circumstances of her death recall a still unsolved theft that took the same museum by surprise more than two decades earlier. Sweeney and her detective friend, Tim Quinn, wonder if the two events are connected. Meanwhile, Sweeney herself is feeling oddly down in the dumps-she'd been planning this exhibit for three years, and she's not sure what to do with herself now. But instead of jumping at the chance to move to London with her live-in beau, she finds herself occasionally daydreaming about Quinn. Cozy fans will eagerly await Taylor's next offering. Regional author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Funerary art expert Sweeney St. George is curating an exhibition at a Harvard University museum when one of the museum workers is murdered during the show's opening. The police shut down the building, which gives Sweeney time to investigate the murder and to find an ancient Egyptian burial necklace missing from the museum's collection. In her fourth outing (after Judgement of the Grave), Sweeney is unfocused, and her indecisiveness hurts more than one person. While not the strongest entry in Taylor's well-received series, it moves the reader along to a nicely plotted ending. For larger collections. Taylor lives in Vermont. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Which matters more: an engagement ring or a funeral brooch?Art historian Sweeney St. George (Judgment of the Grave, 2005, etc.) has two problems on her hands. She has to prepare for the opening of her exhibit on Egyptian funeral jewelry at Boston's Hapner Museum of Art, and she has to decide whether she loves live-in beau Ian enough to move to London with him. Problem #1 gets more complicated when a necklace she wishes to put on display can't be found in the museum's storeroom. Neither can an alabaster stopper to a canopic jar, which was probably used to bash in the head of poor Olga, the cleaning woman lying dead on the floor. All this complicates Problem #2 because solving the murder entails dealing with Quinn, the hunky cop Sweeney may like more than Ian. Alas, the Hapner will claim another victim and raise many questions about the provenance of most of its treasures before Sweeney ties the present-day travails to the suicide of a young graduate student back in the '70s. Taylor, who seems to think Leningrad's Hermitage is in Moscow, might have been less concerned with Sweeney's love life and more diligent in her research. On the other hand, she does explain what canopic jars are-not once, but three times.