Death at Little Mound by Eileen Charbonneau

Death at Little Mound by Eileen Charbonneau
Linda Tassel Mysteries Book 1
Publisher: BWL Publishing Inc.
Genre: Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Young archeology dig site supervisor Linda Tassel and assistant Tad Gist explore the artifacts of ancient people of Linda’s Eastern Cherokee homeland. But soon the body of a team member is found, ritually murdered.

A dam building mogul, Cherokee Nation activists, and the owner of a nearby gold panning attraction are suspects.

Linda and Tad uncover another layer — that of the Spanish conquistadors and the timeless greed for gold. Will they become two more victims?

Every speck of dirt must be accounted for in order to solve this mystery.

My favorite portions of this book were the ones that explored the history, traditions, and beliefs of the Cherokee tribe. The author went into detail on these topics as often as the plot allowed her to do so. I didn’t know much about Cherokee culture, so I was grateful for all of the knowledge she shared. It helped me to understand the main character’s perspective in life and gave logical reasons for why Linda made certain decisions.

The limited amount of character development was my only reason for giving this a three star rating. I liked the characters quite a bit, but I didn’t see much personal growth in them at all. My hope is that the later installments in this series will explore these issues in depth. There is certainly a lot of space to do so, and it would make me even more excited to read a sequel if I had reason to believe that the characters were evolving as a result of their earlier experiences.

Archaeology is a topic I’ve been interested in for years. I loved the scenes that described how meticulously Linda and all of the other workers were exploring the dig site and cataloguing everything they found. This is also something that happens to come in handy in a murder investigation, so combining these two things was an excellent idea.

I’d recommend Death at Little Mound to anyone who is interested in mysteries, archeology, or learning more about Cherokee culture.