Beverly Connor

This is a brilliant mystery as not only does Beverly Connor tie Diane's work in South America to the present case, the author also links back to her Lindsay Chamberlain series without missing a beat. The story line action-packed from the first moan and never slows down until the final confrontation as the past and present subplots excitingly mingle. However, adding to the fun is an overarching theme twist that is unexpected yet seems plausible. Fans of Beverly Connor will relish One Grave Less.

And the award for most unusual boss goes to-- Diane Fallon at the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History in Georgia.

Fallon is a forensic anthropologist and the new director of the RiverTrail Museum in Rosewood, Georgia. Her life is sort of like a big game of chess. Her old flame Frank Duncan comes to her with a bone (literally) and she gets pulled into the investigation of the murder of a couple of Frank's friends even as the working with bones brings up bad and melancholy memories. At the show more same time as the murderer is trying to scare Fallon away, there are more political machinations going on at the museum against her too.

It's a great book, both stories complement each other, but don't tread on the other. There are unexpected twists and turns that are surprising but make sense, and the characters are awesome. They jump off the page and t hey're so real that I found myself rooting for some and despising others. (Probably as the author wanted). And whether 'good' or 'bad', they were all unique too.

This is a great start to a great forensic anthropologist/crime lab series. The PR says it could be compared to Patterson, Cornwell, personally I think it's significantly better than both. show less

One Grave Too Many by Beverly Connor is the first book in her series about Diane Fallon, a forensic anthropologist who, at the beginning of the book has decided to start over as the director of the Rivertrail Museum of Natural History. On the day of the museum’s grand opening, her former boyfriend, Detective Frank Duncan comes to her for help with a human bone found in the woods. Even though she has vowed not to get involved in this type of work again, it isn’t too long before she is show more helping Frank to hopefully clear the surviving member of a murdered family.

Along with this mystery, there is also something going on at the museum, someone is obviously trying to make Diane appear incompetent. A number of board members are pushing to have the museum moved as there is interest in developing the land into a golf course resort. Also Diane has not recovered from her last forensic job that had her working on mass graves in a small South American country.

It took me awhile to get into this book as the author juggled various plotlines and I wondered exactly where the story was going but eventually all the threads were gathered and entwined together. As the characters never really grabbed me and I actually found the academic politics more interesting than the murder plot, I doubt that I will be continuing on with the series.

For me, One Grave Too Many was a quick, light read that just didn’t quite satisfy. show less

Not that any of Beverly Connor's Fallon series mysteries are happy go luck or utterly joyful, but this novel was quite the darkest of the series so far.

A house down the street from Diane that houses students from Bartam University explodes, waking Diane up and soon she's not only embroiled in the investigation to figure out who was responsible. At the same time she's accused of murder, and on the museum side of things she has to figure out who's stealing things from almost all the department show more vaults (Oh, and she nearly gets carjacked at the beginning as well as ending the novel with quite an assortment of injuries). As I said. Quite a dark novel.

The darkness was well done though. Connor had small bits with Frank or Star or the other supporting characters that gave the reader a little respite from the death, destruction, and overwhelming anger that seemed to permeate the plot. Everyone seemed to be angry, from Diane to the parents of the kids who died.

As usual the story also left some dangling plots that could be picked up in the next book, and I hope they are and not just left hanging.

This one was very much a Crime Lab centered book, and it would be nice if there were more museum centered ones, but, then again, the Crime Lab stories are generally more compelling. show less