Pale as the Dead

Sometimes genealogists take themselves and their quest a bit too seriously. Fiona Mountain's Pale as the Dead may be a cure for that. It is really a bit of fluff but what's not to like about a setting in the Cotwolds, a genealogist using the research techniques of almost twenty years ago to try to solve both a contemporary mystery and one about a classical painting? Try it, you might like it; I certainly did.

I was immediately attracted to this book for two reasons. The first is that the main character is a genealogist, and poking around into people's family trees and history (even fictional) is very interesting to me. The second reason is the mix of fact and fiction, and one of the character's links and fascination with Lizzie Siddal, the well-known Pre-Raphaelite model, painter and poet.

The story itself didn't disappoint and I found myself completely drawn into it, wanting to find out more about the missing girl (Bethany) at the heart of the story, and follow Natasha Blake, the genealogist, as she tries to make sense of her disappearance.

This is an easy and enjoyable read and I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the sequel, show more Bloodlines. I know that Fiona Mountain has gone back to writing more historical novels, but I'd love to read more genealogical mysteries as they're quite unique. show less

This is Fiona Mountain's first genealogical mystery with Natasha Blake as the genealogist/detective.It is one of the more realistic genealogy detective stories that I have read and Natasha herself has a good back story - kind of ironic that she is adopted but became a genealogist.

The book is set in England which is a plus for me because I can picture many of the places that Natasha goes to do her research as I have been there doing my own ancestor hunting. It also brings in historical figures as in the background of the person whose ancestors are being researched. Because the book was written in 2002 it is a bit of history in itself as it reminded me of how the research technology was 12 years ago. Genealogy research has come along way show more since the days of looking at the census on microfilm!

A good read and a realistic genealogy mystery and, even better, I have the next book in the series waiting for me on the shelf. show less

Fiona Mountain’s 2002 book, Pale as the Dead, is about Natasha Blake, an uncommon sort of detective whose trade is genealogy. She researches family trees for a living. The author is tapping into a huge interest group here: In England, genealogy is now the most popular hobby, and more websites treat genealogy than any other subject except pornography.
Natasha is approached by a young woman named Bethany, who claims to have ancestors connected with the nineteenth-century painters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Bethany gives Natasha a diary given her by her grandmother. Then she disappears.
Bethany’s boyfriend, a photographer who works in Oxford, hires Natasha to find Bethany. Natasha doesn’t trust the boyfriend, especially when show more he makes a pass at her, but she’s fascinated by the missing girl, who resembles Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife and model, Lizzie Siddal. Bethany seems to cultivate the resemblance, and Natasha worries that she may carry the imitation all the way to suicide, which was Lizzie’s end.
Complicating her identification with the missing girl is the fact that Natasha doesn’t know her own background; she was adopted after being abandoned by her mother in a Sheffield hospital a few hours after Natasha’s birth on the day before Christmas Eve. So Natasha is a genealogist ignorant of her own past, that ignorance, Natasha believes, a good part of the reason why she became a genealogist. Bethany is also ignorant of her past, though she thinks she knows her parents very well. What she doesn’t know about her own background may very well kill her.
The book is set in Oxford and in the picturesque village of Snowshill in the Cotswolds, but some of it takes place in the London haunts of the Pre-Raphaelites and at Kelmscott, where William Morris lived. Mountain does a good job of tying together the past and the present throughout the book, as Natasha’s day takes her past carolers singing “In the Bleak Midwinter,” a carol written by Christina Rossetti, and into public records offices and genealogical archives next to museums exhibiting Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Meanwhile she is reading the diary Bethany gave her, written by the daughter of Lizzie and Dante Gabriel’s doctor and taking her right into the past.
In Bethany’s past Natasha discovers a stunner—the use a word the Pre-Raphaelites liked. This book takes a unique approach to the mystery genre. show less

Set in the Cotswolds and Oxford, this delightful mystery/suspence book would be of interest to those who, like me, appreciate the art of the Pre-Raphalietes.

Using the mystery of the Victorian death/suicide of Lizzie Siddal, the beautiful and haunting model (wife of Dante Gabrial Rossetti) portrayed in many Pre-Raphelite paintings, the author weaves the present with the past.

Natasha Blake, a present day genealogist is hired to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, Bethany, who was obsessed with and possibly linked to Lizzie Saddal.

The author clearly studied a lot about the intertwining lives and scandals of the Pre-Ralphalite brotherhood and creatively wove their happenings into a fascinating detective novel.

This is an unusual mix of genealogy mystery and history, centred on the glamorous Pre-Raphaelite artists and Lizzie Siddal, the girl in the famous ‘Ophelia’ painting. Ancestry detective Natasha Blake meets a mysterious, beautiful young woman, Bethany, who is re-enacting the Lizzie Siddal scene for a photographer. Bethany confides in Natasha her fear that her family is cursed following the deaths of her sister and mother. After asking Natasha to research her family tree, Bethany goes missing. Has she run from a failing love affair, committed suicide, or has she been murdered?
The trail is cold. Natasha must turn detective in two senses: she searches the birth, marriage and death records, census returns and wills, to find Natasha’s show more ancestors; at the same time, she is being followed by someone driving a red Celica. Adam, the photographer, is also Bethany’s boyfriend but Natasha feels there is more to his story than he is telling.
The narrative wandered rather from the central story, complicated unnecessarily by Natasha’s own history and love life which added little. Perhaps this could have been avoided by telling part of the story from Lizzie Siddal’s point of view. There were so many peripheral characters, both in the present time and the historical story, that at times I lost my way. I was also unconvinced by the threat to Natasha - the red car, the break-in. These jarred, almost as if added as an afterthought to appeal to lovers of crime fiction which I think was unnecessary. The kernel of the story about Bethany and Lizzie is fascinating in its own right.
‘Pale as the Dead’ is the first of two Natasha Blake novels.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/ show less

A genealogist is asked to find a photographer's missing girlfriend, because the girl is obsessed with an artist's model from 100+ years ago & the only clue he has is that she left him a journal from one of her ancestors. Yeah, I didn't get the premise, either. And the solution was... well, it didn't make a whole lot of sense. But the genealogical investigation itself was pretty fascinating, with a blend of actual historical figures & fictional ones.