Nell Pratt is the president of the Philadelphia Antiquarian Society, an institution which has been having some interesting times lately--this being volume four in a mystery series. But surely thingss have quieted down now. Crises are resolved, Nell is dating FBI Special Agent James Morrison, and the Society has a large stash of possibly stolen documents it is sorting and cataloging for the FBI. And on her train ride in to work one morning, Nell reads the obituary of a former Society board member. It's not an expected death, but the woman was elderly, and there's no suggestion it was anything but natural.

Then as she's working at her desk that morning, James Morrison calls, and tells her he thinks the former board member's death wasn't natural. He thinks he's seeing a pattern of deaths in older members of Philadelphia's cultural world.

There's enough back story salted in to let readers new to the series pick up the essentials and follow what's going on among the continuing characters. This is a world where historians and reference librarians and catalogers matter, techies are valued for their skills, and the sticky mind that retains details others might find trivial is a valuable asset. Nell, her staff, and James have to work through lots of detail about Philadelphia's cultural world without, at first, really knowing what they're looking for. This isn't action-adventure and won't be to everyone's taste, but it moves along, and the characters and background are interesting, and for me, absorbing.

Alongside the mystery, the characters and their personal lives are also well-developed, likable, and interesting.

Recommended for anyone who enjoys a good cozy mystery.

I received a free copy of the audiobook from Audible in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Nell Pratt, the president of a historical society reads the paper on the train heading into the city to work and notices that one of the former board members has died. When her FBI boyfriend calls that day for information on the dead board, Nell gets involve in an unofficial investigation where apparently board members of one of the society 's foundation are being targeted for death.

Using resources of the society, Nell is able to determine who's a target and the motive. But who's the murderer?

This book had great characters and the mystery was well-written and thoroughly engrossing. ( )

Monument To Death is the 4th book in the A Museum Mystery series.

I love all of Connolly's books and this is no exception. She does such a wonderful job of not only telling a story, but educating the reader about behind the scenes workings with which that series deals. In the case of this series, it is what goes on in a historical museum.

Nell notices an obituary for a former Society board member, Adeline Harrison, since Harrison was up in years, Nell didn't give it a second thought, but made a mental note to send flowers. Then when her close friend and FBI agent, James Morrison, calls for background information on her and mentions other deaths of similar nature in recent times, things aren't adding up.

Nell, with the help of her staff has found a link of the deceased board members and that link seems to point back to Nell's museum. Since James' bosses at the FBI don't feel there is evidence to warrant an investigation, it will be up to Nell and James to find the murderer before another board member dies.

All of the engaging character are back to help Nell in this book.

Definitely looking forward to the next book in this exciting series. ( )

This book, and this series, make me want to bang my head against the desk while tugging on my own hair.

The thing is, I really like the museum setting, and I really like the way the author includes the research angle of the investigation. I love museums and in a next life, I'd love to work in one (hopefully in my next life, museums are better funded). The details of the museum's inner workings, therefore, are really interesting.

The plot of this book, too, was really well done. And kudos to the author for throwing in a total red herring that I fell for completely. It was so effective I almost quit reading the book, aggravated that the killer was so obvious. Ha!

But, and I'm sorry to be so blunt about this, the author cannot write dialogue to save her life. I lost count of how many times I'd be reading a conversation between the characters thinking it was friendly, when suddenly it's a snipe fight. Wha?!? Or else the MC would say something really nasty but it just flowed through without anyone noticing.

While I'm on a roll, the author also comes across rather sexist (I'm sure she's not, actually). Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but throughout the book most of the female characters (who are supposed to be friends, btw), while being very smart, accomplished and competent, constantly over-react, bite each other's heads off, and generally snipe at each other while James the FBI agent (and the only leading male), is always calm, cool, and patient. Mustn't provoke the she-bears...

I also found it extremely annoying that the MC, Nell, seems to have the listening skills of your average zombie. She was constantly, throughout the book, asking James the exact same questions, over and over and over again. For that matter, I found several of the conversations between the characters to be agonisingly repetitive. It occurred to me that perhaps the author was attempting to avoid excessive internal dialogue/story recaps while still actually filling her page quotas. But no, towards the end there's a crap ton of internal dialogue. At one point I skipped a record 5 pages and missed nothing! Not. one. thing. This book could have been 75-100 pages shorter and it would have been a much tighter mystery.

I honestly don't know whether to quit this series or not. I gave up on her other series because the dialogue was off and I didn't care enough about the subject to put up with it, but think the author has a great story setup here and she has the first hand knowledge to make the details sing. If only someone else was doing the writing.... ( )

Monument To Death is the 4th book in the A Museum Mystery series.

I love all of Connolly's books and this is no exception. She does such a wonderful job of not only telling a story, but educating the reader about behind the scenes workings with which that series deals. In the case of this series, it is what goes on in a historical museum.

Nell notices an obituary for a former Society board member, Adeline Harrison, since Harrison was up in years, Nell didn't give it a second thought, but made a mental note to send flowers. Then when her close friend and FBI agent, James Morrison, calls for background information on her and mentions other deaths of similar nature in recent times, things aren't adding up.

Nell, with the help of her staff has found a link of the deceased board members and that link seems to point back to Nell's museum. Since James' bosses at the FBI don't feel there is evidence to warrant an investigation, it will be up to Nell and James to find the murderer before another board member dies.

All of the engaging character are back to help Nell in this book.

Definitely looking forward to the next book in this exciting series. ( )