Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT Arts #Mystery Rituals Of The Dead by @JSAauthor

Today’s team review is from Robbie, she blogs here https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/

Robbie has been reading Rituals Of The Dead by Jennifer S Alderson

In Rituals of the Dead, Zelda Richardson, an American art history student living and working in Amsterdam, is again drawn into a strange mystery. Her accidental involvement in the mystery has the potential to threaten her life and the lives of selected people around her.

Zelda is working as an interim at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam on an exhibition of bis poles from the Asmat region of Papua. When a number of sealed crates from the early 1960s are discovered and opened in a public forum, the personal diary of Nick Mayfield, a well-known American anthropologist who disappeared at that time, is discovered in one of the crates. The Tropenmuseum decides to photograph the diary before returning it to the Mayfield family. Zelda is tasked with assisting with the photography and also with translating the diary into Dutch.

The reader embarks on an exciting journey with Zelda as she slowly translates the diary and learns Nick’s story in the months running up to his disappearance. She becomes embroiled in a ring of criminality from the 1960s that reached between Papua and the Netherlands. Zelda’s discoveries are most unexpected and could shake the Amsterdam art world to its core.

I enjoy Jennifer S. Alderson’s writing and have read the previous novel in this series. The author has a very good working knowledge of the art world and the value and appeal of various art works. I enjoyed learning about Papua during the 1960s and finding out about the art works created by the Asmat people. The author weaves this interesting information into her story without making it cumbersome and the reader is drawn into Zelda’s world in a very realistic and natural way.

I enjoyed learning more about Zelda and seeing how her character developed in this third book in the series. I felt that the author did a good job of showing some growth in her maturity and ability to cope with adverse circumstances.

Art history student Zelda Richardson is working at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam on an exhibition of bis poles from the Asmat region of Papua – the same area where a famous American anthropologist disappeared in 1962. When his journal is found inside one of the bis poles, Zelda is tasked with finding out more about the man’s last days and his connection to these ritual objects.

Zelda is pulled into a world of shady anthropologists, headhunters, missionaries, art collectors, and smugglers – where the only certainty is that sins of the past are never fully erased.

Join Zelda as she grapples with the anthropologist’s mysterious disappearance fifty years earlier, and a present-day murderer who will do anything to prevent her from discovering the truth.

Hi! I worked as a journalist and website developer in Seattle, Washington before trading my financial security for a backpack. After traveling extensively around Asia, Oceania, Europe and Central America, I moved to the Netherlands and earned degrees in art history and museum studies.

When not writing, I can be found in a museum, biking around Amsterdam, or enjoying a coffee along the canal while planning my next research trip.

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