Janet Kellough’s The Burying Ground is an interesting read, not just for the mystery at its center, but also for the historical questions it raises. The setting of this mystery is the Strangers’ Burying Ground in Toronto. Graves are being dug up, but the bodies are left behind, so this can’t be the work of “resurrection men.” The promotional copy focuses on this mystery and the two men who join to try to solve it—the Rev. Thaddeus Lewis and his former student, Morgan Spicer, who is now the caretaker for this cemetery of the poor, the unknown, and the criminal.

I enjoyed this mystery, but for me the character at the heart of the book was Luke Lewis, Thaddeus’ son, who has just completed medical school and entered into a partnership with an aging village doctor. Luke is a gay man with one long-term relationship behind him (his partner died of tuberculosis), who is doing his best both to hide and to ignore this part of his identity. Not surprisingly, among Luke’s concerns is the way his father might respond to Luke’s orientation.

Although The Burying Ground is set in 1851, I’m using modern terminology here—gay, partner—because I don’t know what the terminology of the time was. There was the pejorative term, Molly, which appears in the book, but beyond that, who knows? This brings us to the heart of the issue that captured me: what does it mean to identify as a particular sort of person, if there isn’t even a word to name such people? Would the responses of those who uncover Luke’s secret be typical for his time? Or do they represent Kellough’s more modern sensibilities? These are fascinating questions that the character Luke brings to life for readers.

Read The Burying Ground for its mystery, but also use it a prompting to think about identity and history. ( )

The Burying Ground by author Janet Kellough takes place in 1851 in and around Toronto. Someone is digging up the graves in the Strangers’ Burial Ground devoted to the burials of vagrants, criminals, suicides and other societal outsiders in the small town of Yorkville despite or perhaps because the burial ground is slated for closure and the removal of the bodies. The groundskeeper has asked Thaddeus Lewis, Methodist preacher and circuit rider, to help find the culprits behind this desecration.

Meanwhile Thaddeus’ son, Luke, now a doctor, has taken a position in Toronto in Canada West (now Ontario) and finds himself unwillingly pulled into the social scene. He soon finds himself embroiled with a dangerous character from his past and a possible sexual scandal. As he tries to disentangle himself, it soon becomes clear that all of this is somehow linked to what is happening at the burial ground.

This is the fourth novel in the Thaddeus Lewis historical mystery series but it is the first I have read. Fortunately, although it refers to actions in previous books, this didn’t make it harder for me to follow the tale or slow it down. Not that the story moves at a particularly fast pace – a good thing since there’s a lot going on here. The main characters are likable (I especially liked the eccentric Dr Christie and his rather quirky hobby) and, the mystery itself is interesting if somewhat unlikely given the era. Oddly, at least for me, it was the parts I would call ‘filler’ I liked the best, the tidbits about early Toronto and the talk of disease and the efforts to discover their causes at a time when modern medicine was still a toddler – I kept thinking that uncovering the real cause of an outbreak among the impoverished Irish immigrants would have made a much better mystery than the one portrayed here especially as it’s hinted at but not really explored but that’s just me (maybe in a later book?). Still, for those who enjoy historical mysteries with some interesting characters and a bit of social justice thrown in, The Burying Ground may just be what you’re looking for.

3.5 ( )