Brooklyn Graves

By Triss Stein

A brutally murdered family man without an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home, written a century ago by an unknown female worker at the famed Tiffany studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning stained glass windows is now off limits. Suddenly, all of this is part of Erica Donato's life.

Erica is a youngish single mother of a teen, an oldish history grad student, and the lowest person on the totem pole of the history museum where she works.

Soon secrets begin to emerge in the most unexpected places. An admirable life was not what it seemed, confiding letters conceal their most important story. All set against the background of the splendid old cemetery and the life of modern Brooklyn, the stories of old families and old loves with hidden ties merges with new crimes and the true value of art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Mar 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781615954711

Triss Stein

Triss Stein is a small-town girl who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident which she uses to write mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Legacies is the fifth Erica Donato mystery, following Brooklyn Bones, Brooklyn Graves, Brooklyn Secrets, and Brooklyn Wars.

Reviews for Brooklyn Graves

[beth3511 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It didn't have as strong a sense of Brooklyn as I'd hoped. I also was hoping for more about how the women who worked for Tiffany actually worked on a regular basis. Some nice description of the Brighton Beach area, and parent-teenager relationships.

[clare2e · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You might think that a tale revolving around old letters and stained glass windows (in a cemetery, no less) would be peaceful and leisurely. Well, not in Brooklyn. There's beauty, yes, and some dust, but little peace for Erica Donato, who's got a dissertation to finish, a part-time job that's just been complicated by a pompous academic, a teenage daughter (need I say more?), and unpleasant dramas ripping through her neighborhood and personal life. There's a lot to enjoy here about the evolution of Brooklyn up to the current day, and how this enormous, diverse borough keeps being shaped and remade by the people who decide to make it their home.I loved the way the issue of grieving was addressed. Sometimes, in soft-boiled mysteries, the deaths of characters seem not to be anything more than plot points, excuses for the story to begin. Erica's own grief over the loss of her daughter's father years ago is triggered by the loss of a family friend, another father and husband. The way she negotiates her own memories with her daughter, and tries to reach out to a family whose grief she understands too well is handled very sensitively and realistically, I think, which added depth to the story and a parallel line of contemporary family drama to the ones suspected in the past. Come for the mystery, stay for the history!