STILL AS DEATH by Sarah Stewart Taylor is Book #4 in the Sweeney St. George Mystery series.
Our prologue is dated 1979.
Karen Phillips, an intern at the University’s Hapner Museum of Art, is studying an ancient piece of Egyptian funeral jewelry in the storerooms, when she is interrupted by a robbery and horrifying experience.
Fast forward and we find Sweeney looking for the same exact piece of jewelry, so as to include it in the museum’s upcoming exhibit. Sweeney, art historian and interested in all things funereal, is organizing and developing the exhibit. The Egyptian jewelry would make a perfect addition. Funerary art fascinates Sweeney “because it danced on the subtle line between form and function.”
Once again, this series instructs as well as entertains. We become interested in museum protocols and exhibits; security systems; the thievery and distribution of ancient artifacts; Egyptian artifacts; art lust; and, of course, murder investigations.
We glimpse quite a bit of Sweeney’s personal life as Ian, Toby and Homicide Detective Timothy Quinn all figure in her ‘love life.’
The characters, the plot, the locations all add to this title’s five star rating. ***** ( )

Sweeney St. George, an art historian concerned with the art of death (anything from Egyptian funerary art to the memorial displays of flowers and teddy bears that people put up at crash sites), has curated an exhibit at the museum associated with her university. During the opening a woman is killed and a precious Egyptian artifact is almost -- but not quite -- stolen. There seems to be a connection to a previous museum robbery that was 20 years earlier. Sweeney investigates on her own and also with police detective Tim Quinn, whom we've met in earlier books. She also has unresolved issues in her private life. This is a very good series and I hope there will be many more books in it. ( )

After three years of planning, art history professor Sweeney St. George's museum exhibit on funerary art has finally opened. However, the opening festivities come to a sudden end when, in a remote part of the museum, one of the guests stumbles upon a body. The corpse is lying next to a damaged case housing a rare Egyptian artifact -- and part of the artifact is missing. This isn't the first time the museum has been robbed. Decades earlier, several pieces had been stolen and never recovered. Could the two robberies be connected? And what is the significance of a missing Egyptian necklace, last seen on the day of the first robbery?

This book isn't as strong as the first three books in the series. Even though Sweeney's exhibition is a focal point of the book, there is surprisingly little discussion of her research interests in comparison with the previous novels. I almost get the sense that the author has run out of fresh ideas for these novels. The theft of Egyptian artifacts from a museum isn't a terribly original theme for a mystery novel, and there hasn't been a new book in this series for a few years now. This last book (for now) leaves some things hanging in Sweeney's personal life, making me think that the author plans to continue the series at some point. I have mixed feelings about that. I enjoy the Boston setting, the academic milieu, and Sweeney's research interests. However, the more I learn about Sweeney, the less I like her. She has some serious character flaws, and she frequently hurts those who manage to get close to her, and who treat her better than she deserves to be treated. ( )