Old Bones Never Die by Lesley A. Diehl - #review #giveaway

Just before Walter Egret is killed in a hit-and-run, he phoned his half-brother Sammy to report that he’d unearthed their missing father’s pocket watch, along with a pile of human bones. The project is put on hold until it can be determined if the site is an Indian burial ground. Then the bones disappear.


Now Sammy and his brother’s three orphaned children want Eve Appel to go pro, applying her innate snoopiness to the trade of private investigator.

Eve already has her hands full with her two consignment stores. What is she going to do? Sammy and Walter are Miccosukee Indians, and Walter was employed as a backhoe operator on a construction site for a sportsmen’s resort. Was Walter’s death murder or an accident? If the bones belong to Sammy’s father, how did they get there? Delving into these mysteries, Eve is aided by her usual crew of friends and family. This adventure will not only up the stakes for Eve as an investigator, but it will also open her eyes to life possibilities she never imagined.

GoodReads * Amazon

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MY REVIEW

Just as I loved Laura Murphy in Murder is Academic and Failure is Fatal, I'm a big new fan of Eve Appel in Lesley A. Diehl's Old Bones Never Die.

I took a class in Native American Literature a few years back, so the point of bones discovered at a construction site possibly being Indian brought back a few memories.  One was a story about a couple of grave sites where their were whites and Natives buried - the whites were reburied with care and respect ... while the Native mother and infant were taken to a nearby university to be 'studied'.  Yeah, it made me mad too.

So I can see how Native Americans, in this case the Miccosukee, would want every care possible taken in finding out the origin of the bones that were discovered.  I can also see their reasons to mistrust 'the powers that be' (in this case, the construction company).  And that was before Walter was run down on the way home from work after discovering the bones.  And that was before the bones mysteriously 'disappeared' from the burial site.

The ending was a total surprise to me.  A couple of times after you think you have it figured out, another piece of the puzzle falls into place and you discover what you had concluded 'ain't necessarily so'.

The human interactions amongst the 'white hats' were endearing to experience.  When Walter was killed, he left behind 3 orphaned children.  Walter's brother, Sammy, and Eve are an item.  Of course, Eve has sympathy for the children, but she is uncomfortable around children in general.  I  can relate to that.  It had been at least a decade since there were any children in my life (not it work, or friends or family, really), so as I got older, I wondered how I would deal with children of my own.  (I guess I did ok, because my husband and I have three children!)  And btw, I think I fist-pumped at the solution to that side of the story.

And a quick scout of GoodReads tells me that there are several other Eve Appel stories to go, so my future is looking bright!

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MEET THE AUTHOR

Website * Blog * Twitter * Facebook

Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York.  In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport.  Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse.  When not writing, she gardens, cooks and renovates the 1874 cottage with the help of her husband, two cats and, of course, Fred the ghost, who gives artistic direction to their work.

She is the author of a number of mystery series (Microbrewing Series, Big Lake Mystery Series, Eve Appel Mystery Series and the Laura Murphy Mysteries), a standalone mystery (Angel Sleuth) and numerous short stories.

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GIVEAWAY!!!

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(Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book from the author and publishers via Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours in exchange for my honest review.)