FATAL REMAINS

Fatal Remains
By Eleanor Taylor Bland
272 pages
ISBN: 0-312-30097-2 (Hardback)
St. Martin’s Minotaur
December 2003
$ 23.95

Fatal Remains involves the history of an estate and the skeletons, present and past, discovered. The story begins when a young archeologist is hired for a dig by an eccentric older man who is the owner of the estate. Her assignment is to find something in a particular area that he doesn’t want anyone to know about. Being that he wants to sell this land for a new housing division, he doesn’t want anything dug up later on that could cause problems. His descendants seem to go along with whatever he demands considering his wealth, they appear to agree with the old man’s influence. Surprisingly the archeologist is found dead in one of the holes she was digging, crushed by two rocks that could not have dislodged themselves without help.

To investigate this murder is Marti MacAlister and her partner, Matthew “Vik” Jessonovik. The two are not convinced that this is an accident and start exploring the site by examining the dirt strata and the archeological significance of this site. They are convinced that something was found by the archeologist, and that is why she was murdered. The elderly man does not cooperate with informing the detectives of the historical information which he possesses.

This estate has also had too many “accidents” involving people’s deaths. As their investigation continues, the handyman for the estate “accidentally” dies from a fall out of a barn window. Also, the descendants from the Strolling Potawatomi are searching for a cousin that probably was a recently discovered dead body. An older black male is attempting to conclude his genealogical search as to the disappearance of his ancestors who seemed to have been assisted on the Underground Railroad by a conductor who happens to be the ancestor of the current estate owner. Some of the passengers on the Underground Railroad seemed to have disappeared once they were at this stop where the conductor was the elderly man’s ancestor. There is a ghost who appears. Who are the children that the ghost is searching for?

Fatal Remains is well-written with the story lines intertwining at first so the reader is not certain how or if they will connect. The story line is gripping and has an energy that motivates the reader to constantly keep turning pages. The reader is constantly wondering about what happened in the past, as well as what is happening in the present.

The more Eleanor Taylor Bland writes, the better she gets, and she was good to begin with. The only negative aspect that I find in any of her books is that Marti’s children are unrealistic. The chances of anyone having three children so mature and considerate with no problems is not real life. All of her children are overachievers. A teenaged-daughter who is not into “boys” and is more concerned about the family having a balanced diet of vegetables can be believable if one of the other children, occasionally, causes someone to be concerned or gives the parents a headache.

Eleanor Taylor Bland is a delightful author with a varied life of her own, from marrying when she was fourteen-years-old to becoming an accountant. She tends to write into the stories the things that she is passionate about during this time in her life. Obviously, she has spent time working on the genealogical successes for finding black ancestors who were slaves, as well as the local history of this area of Illinois, with the strolling Potawatomi.

This is an enthralling book to read with depth to the characters possessing a love of our country’s past and the influences of the past now upon our daily lives. Fatal Remains exemplifies its title; the remains of the past are deadly.