The family vault is opened for the burial of an uncle and there's a mystery brick wall inside. They discover a woman's skeleton who was a famous stripper in the 1950s. Sarah's husband is very upset and after the funeral they decide to go to their beach house with his mother, who lives with them, and is blind and deaf. The following morning Sarah's husband and mother-in-law go for a drive and lose control of the car and go off the cliff and are killed. Sarah believes the car was tampered with and then strange things start happening around the house. With the help of an insurance investigator, Sarah discovered what happened and how the deaths are linked together. ( )

Young Sarah Kelling is used to her family’s eccentricities, so isn’t surprised when a great-uncle demanded to be buried in the long-unused family vault just off Boston Common, but when the family opens up that venerable space, she is surprised to find the desiccated corpse of a woman with rubies embedded in her teeth! And when she realizes that somebody put up a small brick wall to conceal the body using the identical pattern that her much-older husband Alexander and her mother-in-law Caroline had used for a secret garden at their country estate, Sarah begins to understand that there is something very much amiss in her family…. A friend recommended the Sarah Kelling series to me the other day and, thanks to the wonders of e-books, I was able to buy and read it in no time at all - and very glad of it too! Sarah is a delightful person, and the peculiarities of her extended family along with the intricacies of the plot all serve as a terrific introduction. This was first published in 1979, and it’s nice to go back to those pre-Internet/cellphone/crazed technology times; even better, there are a dozen books in the series, and I’ve already started the second one. A great discovery, thanks to my friend; highly recommended! ( )

This was written in the 1970s. Our techno lives are so different then when we had phone books. ( )

I found this to be a disappointing book. There are so many holes in the plot that, by the end, I wasn't reading to find out who committed the murder but just to spot the next bit of silliness. ( )

A good read. Easy language. Kept my attention. Hardly Agatha Christie with 100 suspects, you are following the suspicions of the lead character all the way. ( )