For fans of:  Christy Evans’ Georgiana Neverall Mysteries; Sheila Connolly’s Orchard Mysteries

As newly elected president of The Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society, Eleanor “Nell” Pratt has a lot on her plate.  Not only does she need to hire a new assistant, a new registrar, and a new director of development, but much of the city is still gossiping about the scandal that brought an abrupt end to the tenure of Nell’s predecessor.  So when Arabella Heffernan, head of the Let’s Play children’s museum, invites her over for a sneak peak at their new interactive exhibit, Nell jumps at the chance for a fun little break in her otherwise stressful and chaotic day. 

Unfortunately for Nell, however, she gets a little more excitement than she’s bargaining for when one of the exhibit’s animated forest creatures malfunctions, electrocuting one of the installers and landing him in the hospital.  Arabella brushes off the incident as an accident and swears she’ll have the wiring fixed before the exhibit opens, but when later that week Nell reads in the paper about another electrical mishap at Let’s Play – this one fatal – she starts to wonder if the problems with the wiring were intentional.  Can Nell help Arabella figure out who’s targeting the museum and why, and get things back on track in time to save the exhibit’s grand opening?

Let’s Play Dead is the second installment in Sheila Connolly’s Museum Mystery series.  While I loved the series debut, Fundraising the Dead, I have to say I was less than wild about Connolly’s follow-up effort.  Let’s Play Dead simply lacks the spark that made Fundraising the Dead such a success.  The prose is dry and overly formal, the narration is scattered, and there’s an utter lack of action, tension, and drama.  This, coupled with an overabundance of deadly dull info-dumps on topics ranging from electricity to the history of Philadelphia baseball, drags the book’s pacing to a halt.

The mystery is uninteresting and overly complicated, and Connolly’s attempts at plot twists are implausible bordering on ridiculous.  The stakes are low, making it difficult for the reader to understand why, if Nell’s so busy, she bothers to get involved with the investigation in the first place.  And while the book’s final showdown is the most interesting part of Connolly’s tale, the story’s resolution is the definition of anticlimactic.

Nell’s a strong but not terribly likable heroine.  Officious, condescending, and not just a little judgmental, it’s as though the promotion she earned at the end of Fundraising the Dead (from chief fundraiser to president) robbed her of her charm.  Nell clearly adores her job, but Connolly would do well to give her main character a life outside the Society – something to humanize her and make it easier for the reader to identify with her and become emotionally invested in her exploits.

If his role in Fundraising the Dead was any indication, FBI Agent James Morrison has a great deal of potential as a love interest, but his contribution to Let’s Play Dead is positively snooze-worthy.  Connolly doesn’t really give him much of a personality, and there’s little-to-no chemistry between him and Nell.

And while Nell’s new assistant, Eric, and cantankerous board member Marty Terwilliger add a much-needed touch of color to the story, their contributions aren’t significant enough to balance out an otherwise boring and two-dimensional cast.

In sum, Let’s Play Dead is a perfectly serviceable, if largely unremarkable, summer read.  If you enjoy reading about Philadelphia history, you may get a little more enjoyment out of this book than I did, but otherwise, I’d advise you to take a pass.

~ Kat