Book Review: Grave Circle

Reviewed By: Woodstock - RAM

Grave Circle     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
David D. Nolta
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Amateur Sleuth
Series: Ivory Tower Mystery

This is the introductory novel to what aspires to be a series set in a small, fictional college in the Eastern US. An excavation in an old house being remodeled and updated for campus use unearths the body of a faculty wife - missing from the scene for over ten years, and presumed by her contemporaries on campus to have abandoned her husband and young son.

The local police approach a female professor, Antigone Musing, for assistance in discussing the discovery with the woman's son - now in late teenage and a student at the college. She is helped by her brother, Hiawatha. The two read more into the request from the police than the officers intended, and are soon embroiled in interviews and conversations attempting to determine the facts of the woman's death.

The novel's pace is deliberate, with quite a few pauses to describe various scenes in faculty homes, classrooms, and faculty offices. Little if any action or suspense exists to liven things up for the reader.

Those who prefer a milder story line, and those who are interested in behind the scenes descriptions of academic life might enjoy this.

Woodstock - RAM

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