syren1532's review against another edition
4.0
A viking burial, a spate of farm robberies and a missing Danish tourist keep DS Wesley Peterson and the team busy.
Love this series.
Love this series.
brompton_sawdon's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent story. The series gets even better :)
avidreadergirl1's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
I just love that series with its mix of ancient and modern crimes that intersect.
Wesley’s partneship with Hefferman is just well done as are the other characters around the action. Thank goodness, Pam wasn’t much a part of the story as she as a tendancy to be nagging Wesley and she pretends she’s a modern woman.
Anyways, this was a great read and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Wesley’s partneship with Hefferman is just well done as are the other characters around the action. Thank goodness, Pam wasn’t much a part of the story as she as a tendancy to be nagging Wesley and she pretends she’s a modern woman.
Anyways, this was a great read and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
nonna7's review against another edition
4.0
This is the fourth book in the Wesley Peterson series. It combines what I like about this series: an archeological mystery as well as a modern one.
The book opens with the team trying to solve a series of farm robberies. However when a Danish tourist disappears that becomes a focus of Wesley's. Then murders happen. At the same time a local farmer finds an a body that turns out to be 1000 years old and leads to discovery of some documents that were stored in a forgotten part of a local museum.
I really enjoyed this book. It kept me guessing to the end and, like her other books, this one also offered some historical education.
The book opens with the team trying to solve a series of farm robberies. However when a Danish tourist disappears that becomes a focus of Wesley's. Then murders happen. At the same time a local farmer finds an a body that turns out to be 1000 years old and leads to discovery of some documents that were stored in a forgotten part of a local museum.
I really enjoyed this book. It kept me guessing to the end and, like her other books, this one also offered some historical education.
nocto's review against another edition
Less overt tie ins between the modern day murder investigated by Wesley Peterson and the archaeological story investigated by his wife Pamela together with his friend Neil make this a more plausible book than the earlier ones I've read. That might be because I skipped some of the historical bits because I've found them too much (plotwise) in the other books though.
Fun reads all the same.
addison_reads's review against another edition
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
This is book 4 in this series and I'm still enjoying following Wesley through his combined worlds of archaeology and detective work. The historical part of this story involved a skeleton that Wesley thinks might be a Viking. The Viking backstory was well researched and very informative.
Another entertaining easy read and I'm looking forward to the next one.
Another entertaining easy read and I'm looking forward to the next one.
ksm's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
smcleish's review
3.0
Originally published on my blog here in July 2001.
Having read some good review of Ellis' other mysteries featuring Wesley Peterson, I was initially disappointed by The Funeral Boat. The beginning is badly let down by poor dialogue, and I seriously considered abandoning the novel after the first two or three chapters. Things improve, even though unconvincing dialogue remains the novel's most serious flaw.
The story begins with the discovery of a body on a Devon farm, which soon seems to be likely to be a Viking warrior buried a thousand years ago rather than, as the police hoped, a villain who once lived at the farm, who had disappeared some years earlier. At about the same time a Danish tourist has gone missing, kidnapped, and there is a spate of armed robberies at local farms. Every one of these crimes - as well as the body - seems to Peterson to be bizarrely conntected to Viking raids in the area, though his original desire to become an archaeologist rather than a policeman might have something to do with this.
Apart from the dialogue, there is much to admire in The Funeral Boat. It is well characterised, the combination of policework and archaeology is unusual, and there are nice little touches of humour. I suspect that even so it is likely to be one of the weaker novels in the series, so that I look forward to trying others.
Having read some good review of Ellis' other mysteries featuring Wesley Peterson, I was initially disappointed by The Funeral Boat. The beginning is badly let down by poor dialogue, and I seriously considered abandoning the novel after the first two or three chapters. Things improve, even though unconvincing dialogue remains the novel's most serious flaw.
The story begins with the discovery of a body on a Devon farm, which soon seems to be likely to be a Viking warrior buried a thousand years ago rather than, as the police hoped, a villain who once lived at the farm, who had disappeared some years earlier. At about the same time a Danish tourist has gone missing, kidnapped, and there is a spate of armed robberies at local farms. Every one of these crimes - as well as the body - seems to Peterson to be bizarrely conntected to Viking raids in the area, though his original desire to become an archaeologist rather than a policeman might have something to do with this.
Apart from the dialogue, there is much to admire in The Funeral Boat. It is well characterised, the combination of policework and archaeology is unusual, and there are nice little touches of humour. I suspect that even so it is likely to be one of the weaker novels in the series, so that I look forward to trying others.
More...