An Artful Corpse

 An Artful Corpse is the third in a series by Helen Harrison, but the first one I have read.  I love a good cozy mystery and it is always interesting when there is a new twist on who the amateur detective will be.

This time TJ a young college student is the amateur detective, though he is the son of two officers of the law.  His father and mother are both New York City police detectives, which gives them all an inside track on the murder case at hand.  Though a little unrealistic that the officers handling the case would give out information to a fellow detective not assigned to the case, who would share it with their child, is a bit of a stretch.  

Tj is in school to learn police training but still is exploring the idea of being an artist.  He is attending The Art Student's League .  This is a famous art school in NYC.  The main attraction of the book to me is that both my mother and my sister took classes at the school.  So reading about the history of the school, hearing the names of real teachers who worked at the school was interesting.  Also the descriptions of the art and artists that came through the school.  Imagining the picture of TJ and his love interest and friends attending classes and life drawing classes takes me back to family conversations at home.

Mystery wise this was way to easy to solve. I knew who did it even before they did it. So the most interesting par of this book was the history of the 1960s in New York.  The inclusion of real locations and what was happening around the Vietnam War at that time.  I am not sure I will go back to read the first two mysteries in this series.