Archaeology Detectives

The Body in the Mound
John Bedell
2012

Archaeology and mysteries have a strong affinity. Both are concerned with clues, solving puzzles based on limited facts, and getting at the truth. Archaeology usually lacks the pure and definitive satisfaction of the mystery novel ending. Despite, or perhaps  because, of this there have been a lot of archaeology mysteries.

Beginning with Agatha Christie classics like Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Bagdad, Man in the Brown Suit, Death Comes as the End and others. Christie was actually married to an archaeologist, Max Mallowan, and spent many years helping him with his digs. Supposedly Murder in Mesopotamia is based  on one of the digs they went on together, including a veiled description of the high strung wife of the head of the excavation and famous archaeologist, Leonard Woolley.

Recently there's been lots of  others: Elizabeth Peters' fabulous Amelia Peabody 19th century Egyptology mysteries,  Lyn Hamilton's Lara McClintoch, Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway series, Kathy Reichs – Temperance Brennan, and the list goes on. There are a lot. Check out: Digging Death. for a list of a bunch of well known ones. I've read a lot of these. Some are very, very good. Some authors just do not understanding how archaeology works and it shows. Archaeology is collaborative, a group activity, not the work of a single genius, no matter how polymath he might be (Indy!).

Recently I've been reading about the work of acclaimed archaeologists like Sarah Wisseman of the University of Illinois, who writes mysteries. John Bedell, who is also a noted professional archaeologist working in the Middle Atlantic region published his first mystery, The Body in the Mound via Amazon e-books. It came to my attention  last spring and I had to get a copy (e-book) of it immediately. As sometimes happens, I could not put it down and read it in about a day but it has taken me some time to write about it.  I really enjoyed it. This story   falls into the category of accidental detective since the character is pulled into the case by circumstance.

Bedell's hard living and hard digging archaeologist Jack Gordon is running an archaeological survey for a gas pipeline near small Pennsylvania  town called Renovo in Clinton County. The survey is looking for archaeological sites in the path of the pipeline.This is, of course, one kind of work that many archaeologists do to pay the bills and to find cool sites and record them before they are destroyed by  construction. Jack profitably runs his own company (possibly the most fantastic part of the story). 

He is asked by the police to look at a murder victim found in a 2,000 year old  but looted Indian burial mound. The mound is of a type called Adena based on a culture centered in Ohio, who buried their dead with rich and unusual artifacts like copper beads, tubular pipes, exotic stone points, and other items. The body is completely modern but its presence in an ancient mound is unexplained. (Honestly, who hasn't thought of hiding a body in a burial mound?)

Jack doesn't understand what is going on but he needs to find out in a hurry as he  is threatened, shot at, and accused of being the murderer.  What ensues is a pretty gritty (literally) struggle to find the truth and the missing artifacts before he ends up in jail or dead. There's lots of local (Renovo) color and locals. This is a fast moving novel and a lot of fun to read. Local archaeologists can read it without worry! John Bedell does know what he's talking about and it holds up pretty well.   

Sub-genres

I try to talk about the sub-genres of crime fiction in my reviews. I  never thought about the definitions of these  before I started this blog (although I had heard the terms bandied about). I only knew if I liked it or not. this blog has really changed my thought process about what I read and why I like it and I never really thought about that before.  It's  niche, sub genre, a tiny part of the reading public we fit within (and can be marketed to!)

With that in mind I did a little research into the sub-genre category and found these handy and neat definitions in the for mystery addict listserve:

Fred Runk's definitions on 4MA. All of these have substantial followings.

I present this here and add  a little (see italics):

1. Police procedurals: police officers, sheriffs, FBI, law enforcement officers in general. PD James' Dalgleish for example, King's Kate Martinelli.  
Martha Grimes' Richard Jury, J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas, Deborah Crombie's Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid, Louise Penny's Armande Gamache, J.A. Jance's Joanna Brady. This is one of the most popular types - some are set in the past, future, or an exotic locale.


2. Talented Amateurs: Like Emma Peel! Agatha Christie's "Miss Marple," Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael, Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey, or anyone who ends up stumbling over an inordinate number of dead bodies. This also includes non-human detectives.   
I hate dog and cat mysteries; let me say that again! There are lots of these like Diane Mott Davidson's caterer Goldy Schultz, Hank Phillippi Ryan's Charlotte McNally, Sarah Graham's Jacobia Tiptree, Earlene Fowler's Benni Harper, Carolyn Hart's Annie Darling, Susan Wittig Albert's China Bayles, David Skebbins' Warren Ritter, C.S. Harris' Sebastian St. Cyr. Some of these are cosies if they feature minimal violence, cute settings, bunch of friends, and warm community. Some have a recipe or craft component. Historical mysteries often have these kind of detectives.

3. P. I.: private investigators who are professionals (they get paid, or are supposed to, anyway), and not connected to police--Philip Marlowe; Sam Spade; Kinsey Millhone; or Steven Saylor's Roman PI, Gordianus the Finder; or Precious Ramotswe of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency.
Sharon McCone, Sherlock Holmes, V.I. Warshawski, Spenser, Tess Monaghan...

4. The Accidental Detective: one who accidentally comes across a murder or goes to the funeral of a deceased friend or relative and inds out there are some strange elements connected to that death.
Agatha Christie's Anne Beddingfeld (about my favorite of her books), Dick Francis one-time heroes, BTW), gosh, it's really hard to think of these...
Note: accidental detectives are one time only. Either they solve the mystery and are never seen again, or they end up in the "Talented Amateur" category when they show up in book 2.

5. Judicial Detectives: anybody connected with the legal system who spends more time doing the cops' job than their own. This includes various judges, lawyers, DA's, bailiffs, bounty hunters.  
Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, Linda Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper.

6. Technical professionals: medical examiners, pathologists, coroners, CSI types, SOCO's, etc. Many of these also spend an inordinate amount of time doing police work, interviewing suspects, etc.  
Lisa Black's Theresa McClean, Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta, Ariana Franklin's Adelia Aguilar.

7. the historical detective--Brother Cadfael, Crowner John, Gordianus the Finder, etc.  
Fred thinks this fit in the above categories - and they do - either as police procedurals (Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt), professional PIs (Anne Perry's Thomas Monk), amateur detectives (Sebastian St. Cyr, Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily, Rhys Bowen's Lady Georgiana, Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody, Adelia Aguilar) but I think it's a significant sub-category.

8. the "real person" detective--Jane Austen, Queen Elizabeth, Charles Dickens, etc. (Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen series, Queen Victoria, and Virginia Woolf mysteries were terrific, I've read ones that featured Bertie the Prince of Wales, Charlotte Bronte, Abigail Adams, Ed Ifkovic's Edna Ferber; I'm waiting for novels with Lord Byron, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Gore, Elizabeth Taylor... I don't know... Winston Churchill, Bismarck, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Lincoln...


9. the retired "detective": retired cop, judge, lawyer, FBI profiler.....(see above...)

Any other categories I've missed?

10. Spy novels mysteries (like recently reviewed Sally Sin)
11. Others? Zombie Hunters, Supernatural (Vampire) - Anita Blake

Agatha Christie

I recently bought an IPad, in part as an e-reader. My local library has a limited supply of e-books and I began to re-read some of the hoary Agatha Christies I read years ago to try it out. The IPad is a great tool for reading and for updating this blog - although I have trouble adding pix and will have to learn more about that. As I mentioned in my first blog in January 2010, http://hitormystery.blogspot.com/2010/01/classics.html, Agatha Christie's A Mirror Cracked... was the first adult mystery novel I ever read (I did read Nancy Drew with my  pals), in the 1970s at age 12 or 13. I found them soothing and a balm to the day's troubles.

Old fashioned reads  for a young girl, but I read them all. And loved them. Having read a lot more over the years, I get their shortcomings but they still are incredibly charming. And sometimes Agatha had a thing or two going on in her head.  I read Bertram's Hotel and While the Light Lasts, a neat collection of her short stories. I will re-read a bunch more especially some of my favorites: Man in a Brown Suit, Murder In Mesopotamia, Toward Zero, Death on the Blue Train,  Passenger to Frankfurt, Death Comes as the End, the Tommy and Tuppence stories, and many other old friends. They are still a sweet read.

The Classics

Even though I've been talking about contemporary mystery fiction, I've read a lot of the classics too. In my first blog I said I liked historical fiction, I've read a lot of the woman hard-boiled detective sub-genre: Paretsky, Muller, Grafton, as well as Cornwall, Skye Kathleen Moody (Venus Diamond series), Maron, and a bunch I can't think of at the moment. Really my mystery reading began long ago with Nancy Drew and the formation of our Nancy Drew reading boy-bashing club in elementary school, "The Pennsauken Little Spies". I've also read a lot in other sub-genres although not every one by any means.

Now the classics: I've read some of the earlier twentieth century classics such as Christie, Sayers, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Raymond Chandler, Hammett, Dick Francis, P.D. James, Mary Stewart as well as earlier formative stuff like Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841),The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842), and The Purloined Letter (1844); The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) by Wilkie Collins, Sherlock Holmes (of course!), Henry James (Turn of the Screw) in addition to lots of spy novels like Fleming, Le Carre, Deighton, and so on.

Reading an essay in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction), this is much bigger subject than I had thought and there is a good deal already written about the historic of the genre, with many lists, guides, interpretations, and discussions. see for example: http://mikegrost.com/classics.htm

The history of mystery, crime, or detective fiction can be seen to start with one of Scheherazade's tales in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights).


Classic detective fiction like many other kinds of fiction can be traced to innovative geniuses of the 19th century. Crime fiction, whodunnits, mysteries, what ever you call them are divided into a lot of subgenres and these are increasing every day. Subgenres include "cozy," "historical," "detective," "police procedural," "crafts," "art," famous historical figures as detectives, "pets," "chick lit," and more, and many of these have further subdivisions. This is a much bigger topic than I realized and it will be really interesting to delve into it some more...