Garden of the Dead

by Andrew Neiderman

Overview

The new novel from the best-selling storyteller - Randy Quinn took over his father’s position as manager of an exclusive cemetery, despite the negative opinions of his friends and contemporaries about the job. Still unmarried, and living in his parents’ house after their passing, he is worried about grave-robbers when the relatives of a wealthy man insist on burying him with expensive jewellery. But when, as he feared, the grave is disturbed, he uncovers the coffin and makes a shocking discovery . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780100043
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	08/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	295 KB

About the Author

Andrew Neiderman is the author of numerous novels of suspense and terror in

Editorial Reviews

The prolific Neiderman, best known for The Devil's Advocate after its big-screen treatment, treads water with this subpar thriller. An unusual request disrupts the pedestrian existence of upstate New Yorker Randy Quinn, a bachelor who's been a loner all his life thanks to his family's business—a cemetery and funeral home. Evelyn Kitchen, who was the object of Quinn's desire in high school, and her snobby twin brother, Stuart, claim that their late father, successful businessman Matthew Kitchen, asked to be buried with "his Rolex, gold necklace, gold bracelet and diamond wedding ring." Quinn tries to keep the elder Kitchen's being buried with valuable jewelry under wraps, but when he suspects the man's grave has been disturbed, he digs up the coffin and makes an upsetting discovery that plunges him into a murder mystery. A dull lead and a slow-moving plot make for a dull read. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Veteran Neiderman (Angel of Mercy,1994, etc.) tangles an inoffensive gravedigger in a web of accusations that spiral into murder.

Randy Quinn is a man of simple tastes. He's never attended college, never left his upstate New York hometown and never—except for his continued, unrequited attraction to Evelyn Kitchen, his high-school crush—dreamed of a future more fulfilling than keeping Sandburg Cemetery in apple-pie order for his bosses, Jack Waller and Richard Valentine. His amatory interest in divorced waitress Scarlet Moore hardly rises to the status of romance. The biggest recent development in Randy's life is the return of Barry Palmer, his best friend in school, from a disastrous marriage in the Southwest. During a night of decorous carousing, Randy offers Barry a job at the cemetery and then watches his life go up in flames. During a chance return to the office with Scarlet after their date the following night, he realizes that someone has disturbed the grave of Matthew Kitchen, whose son Stuart, Evelyn's twin, insisted be buried with his expensive jewelry. Instead of calling police chief Lou Siegman, Randy, in the first of many remarkably stupid miscalculations, decides to dig up the grave with Scarlet's help in order to see whether the old man is still attired in his finery. What he and Scarlet discover will make him think twice about having hired Barry—but not, evidently, about much else that he takes for granted but shouldn't.

A perfectly reasonable premise for a thriller undermined by a goodhearted hero too dumb to be true.

Kirkus Reviews