Mesozoic Murder

Rating:
Summary: A nice mystery
Review: Ansel Phoenix, dinosaur illustrator & president of the Pangaea Society, takes three students out on a field seminar to find fossils. They are shocked when they unearth a dead body-that of Ansel's colleague, Nick Capos. Ansel tries to do damage control for the Society. A $300,000 memorial gift is just about to be transferred to the Society for the construction of the Preston Opel Paleohistory Center in a dual partnership with the Montana Musuems Association and now the MMA is making noise about the bad publicity resulting from Nick's murder. The Society's constantly bickering membership does not help Ansel's quest. And the publicity gets worse when another Society member is murdered in the same fashion as Nick. In the meanwhile, Ansel gets permission from Nick's widow to appraise his fossil collection. But the fossil collection is missing from his apartment. Even more puzzling, Nick had developed a sudden interest in Baltic amber and had been working on a secret after-hours project at the Roosevelt Museum. Attacked in her own home by a masked man who insists she knows more than she actually does, Ansel starts looking for answers without the blessing of Lieutenant Reid Dorbandt, assigned to the murder cases. Mesozoic Murder is essentially a decent mystery with a mediocre ending. The murderer's motives seems weak and the murderer isn't hard to guess by process of elimination. Ansel makes an interesting protagonist but her constant charge of bigotry to everyone and sundry may get tiresome & it makes her sound like an ornery child that needs to grow up. However, I still recommend this book and look forward to reading another installment.

Also recommended: Other archeology-themed mysteries: Lara McClintock series by Lyn Hamilton; Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters: Emma Fielding series by Dana Cameron