Nell agrees to meet Marty the next morning, but before she continues with the preparations for the gala she makes a visit to archivist and cataloger Alfred Findley who is in the middle of organizing and cataloging the museum's over two million pieces of paper and artifacts. Alfred tells Nell that he has been keeping a list of missing items and reporting them to the head of collections each month, a list that concerns him with its breadth and scope.

Nell tucks all this information away and pastes on a smile for the evening's event. The next morning when Nell arrives at the museum to go over the previous evening with her staff, and meet Marty, she finds Alfred dead in the stacks. The police rule the death an accident, but Nell isn't so sure and more importantly, neither is Marty, who is related to most of Philadelphia, including Alfred. Marty is certain that the missing artifacts and Alfred's death are related and when Charles, the museum's president, with whom Nell is in a relationship, dismisses the missing artifacts as the cost of doing business and Alfred's death a tragic accident, Marty and Nell decide to take matters into their own hands and investigate both the thefts and the murders.

Fundraising the Dead is a wonderful introduction to a new amateur sleuth, Nell Pratt. American and Philadelphian history are neatly woven into the plot and will pique the interest of even the most reluctant history student. With Marty as an ancestor of a man who corresponded with General Washington, history takes on a very personal slant. Nell is not a simpering young girl just out of college, but a more mature, and very sensible woman who has very few illusions; she is happy with the level of her job and doesn't have many upward ambitions and is very likable from the beginning. The setting is well written from Philadelphia in October to the historical building that houses the library to Nell's house in Bryn Mawr outside of the city on the Main Line.

Marty is a good side-kick for Nell because she either knows or is related to everyone in the city (including a handsome FBI agent), has loads of money and a keen sense of personal history and the importance of preserving it, especially in the context of American history. Both mysteries are well-paced; it is relatively easy to figure out who the missing artifact thief, though there is another likely suspect that could have been developed more.

Here's hoping Nell Pratt has a long sleuthing career and unearths many more treasures and mysteries in the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society.

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry