Faye Longchamp is, at heart, an archeologist. However, she is driven to illegal digging to save Joyeuse, her ancestral home. Faye, with her companion Joe, uncover a body on one of the nearby islands. When they go back to examine it, the body had disappeared.
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Meanwhile, at the respectable dig where Faye is assisting a former professor, two of the students left on the island overnight disappear.
Poisoned Pen Press, May 2003, 24.95, 290 pp.
ISBN 1590580567
Off the coast of the Florida Panhandle lay the Last Isles and on Joyeuse lies the antebellum mansion belonging to Faye Longchamp. It is badly in need of repairs but Faye barely can pay taxes and the last thing she wants is lose the home that has been in her family for generations. She earns the money to pay the taxes by illegally digging up artifacts on her land and the National Wild Refuge and selling them to collectors whom don't care about the source.
Faye also works on an archeological dig on nearby Seagreen Island when two students in the group disappear. On a hunch, Faye starts digging and finds the two bodies, both shot to death. The dig is closed and Faye looks for artifacts on Water Island when she comes under attack by a man she thought was a friend and his partner who are digging up priceless Clovis artifacts. When she digs up the body of a young debutante who disappeared many years ago she comes to the attention a killer who intends to make Faye his fourth victim.
Faye is biracial and doesn't feel as if there is a place for her in mainstream society, which is why she is determined to hold on too her land, the only place she believes she belongs. She doesn't realize she has two killers who want her dead before she discovers and reveals their secrets. ARTIFACTS is an exciting and colorful amateur sleuth novel that is rich in atmosphere giving the reader a picture of what it takes to live in an island culture.
Harriet Klausner
The review of this Book prepared by Harriet Klausner
