Picture Them Dead: A Family History Mystery by Brynn Bonner

             Hmmm.   Something concerning is happening in the Family History Mystery series.  With each book, there is less of the genealogical work that the main character and her partner do.  It’s still in there, but the attention to the specific work the two characters do isn’t.  As someone who is interested in genealogy, I miss those parts.  Not to the point where I’m going to stop reading the books, though.  Despite the lessening of the genealogy specifics, I know with the Family History Mysteries I will have a good mystery to read.

                It’s not a normal occurrence to find a dead body in a glass casket buried in your backyard.  At least it certainly isn’t for River Jeffers, father to police detective Jennifer Jeffers.  The discovery of the body is definitely surprising to River, but instead of covering it up and acting as though it never happened, or removing the casket off his property so he doesn’t have to deal with it anymore, River decides to keep the casket where it is and determine who the person could possibly be.  Not sure how to go about this, River asks Jennifer to seek the help of genealogist Sophreena McClure and her business partner, Esme Sabatier.  On the surface, this seems like a simple request.  The problem is, Sophreena and Esme don’t get along with Jennifer.  It’s not as though they have anything specifically against her, it’s just that Jennifer has made it very clear she doesn’t like them.  Fortunately for River and Jennifer, the idea of investigating a glass casket is too interesting to pass up.

                While the situation is odd, it seems as though looking into who was buried in the casket will be a pretty routine task.  Then another body turns up.  This time it is the body of a young woman.  She is discovered near the glass casket’s burial site, and just as with the body in the casket, no one knows who she is.  It takes some work around town for Sophreena to discover that this young woman is the granddaughter of the house’s previous owner.  Certain that the two dead bodies are somehow connected, Sophreena goes to the only person she can think of for help: Charlotte Walker, the previous owner.

                Unfortunately for Sophreena, Miss Lottie is a nasty piece of work.  She is so bad that Esme refuses to visit her again.  Sophreena keeps persisting, though, because she is certain that something Miss Lottie knows is the key to everything.  She just has to sift through all the nastiness to get to it, if she can. 

               I will admit, that at first I had a hard time with this book holding my attention. This could have been because of things going on around me or whatever was going through my mind at the time, but it did take me a little bit to grab onto this book. Then once I did, all I wanted to do was read. I wanted to see if I was right about who the culprit was and what happens to all the new characters that are introduced. Some of those characters I hope stick around for the other books in the series. They would be great additions to Sophreena’s and Esme’s core group of friends, especially since the group of friends seem to be breaking up as the series goes on. For me, that is disappointing, because the core group of friends is one of the many things I liked about this series. I really hope all of the problems in the group get figured out soon, because they are all such good, supportive people. It would be really sad to see them go away.