Digging Up Death

Kay Engels #2

by Triss Stein

If a city is to grow, it is sometimes necessary to go downward first, into the layers of earth and the mounds of detritus left behind like a snake's skin from earlier periods. Usually, there's nothing much to be discovered in the holes that will become the foundation of new some stones, old wood, broken bottles.
Fifty feet from Wall Street, where New York City began, some urban archaeologists have sifted through the layered years and uncovered the usual and then they found the the burned bones of a man murdered three hundred years ago.
For magazine columnist Kay Engels, the body, discovered by her friend Vera, might make an interesting story ... if anything can be learned about what happened in the tavern where the murder probably was committed. For the moment, though, the site is just a news item . . . until another very contemporary murder takes place and the story turns deadly.
From Little Moscow in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach to the top of the skyscrapers lifting Manhattan ever higher, Kay digs into the world of real estate development and finance, unearthing a blueprint for murder that now has her name right at its foundation.

Genres: Mystery

190 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Triss Stein is a small-town girl who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident which she uses to write mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Graves is the second Erica Donato mystery, following Brooklyn Bones.

Reviews

[Catsalive · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK read, nothing special.

Reporter Kay Engels digs up more than a potential story when archaeologist and close friend Dr Vera Contas uncovers startling artefacts in the middle of a New York City construction site. Beneath the inner city dirt and gravel lies a tavern burned in 1698... and with it a link to the notorious pirate Captain Kidd, and perhaps his legendary treasure.

When a worker is found dead, Vera begs Kay to do some quiet unearthing of her own. Several acts of vandalism at the site lead Kay to Alan Elkan, the handsome and dynamic developer, and dangerously entangles her personal and professional life as she falls into a mystery as deep as the watery grave a killer has waiting just for her...

[Atarah Poling · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book I read by Triss Stein and I loved it. It was a very interesting book full of suspense and of coarse mystery. I will gladly recommend this book 2 anyone who enjoys mystery.