Mary Anna Evans Relics

Relics

Mary Anna Evans

Poisoned Pen, Aug 2005, $24.95, 306 pp.

ISBN: 1590581199

Last minute replacement for a pregnant forty-five year old, archaeology graduate student Faye Longchamp leads an excursion into a remote Alabama area to study the Sujosa who have lived in isolation here for centuries and are apparently immune to modern day diseases like AIDS. Faye knows how reticent the Sujosa are with outsiders.

Not long after arriving, the abode where Faye and others stay is an inferno. She escapes, but her oral historian expert Carmen Martinez dies in the fire. Fire Marshal Adam Strahan struggles with how the fire began while Faye wonders how a metallic suitcase that Carmen possessed vanished. Not long afterward, a teenager dies at what appears to be a suicide at a cell phone construction tower, but Adam, Faye, and others ponder whether a clever homicide is covered up to look like self inflicted death occurred. Could Carman have found something that has led to someone murdering to keep secrets hidden?

The sequel to ARTIFACTS, RELICS is a terrific mystery that provides the audience with a wonderful look at Alabama through an archeological lens that glimpses back at the state's history from a modern viewpoint. The storyline is exciting from the moment Faye survives the deadly arson until the climax that will surprise the audience. Readers will enjoy this fine regional who-done-it while anticipating more appearances from Faye working in the field.

Harriet Klausner