Fundraising the Dead
A Museum Mystery
By Sheila Connolly
Paperback, 324 pages, $6.99

Philadelphia is full of historic homes and documents, and now it’s the setting for a terrific new cozy museum mystery series with a dynamic accidental sleuth named Nell Pratt.

If you like museums that house Revolutionary War collections and witty, funny main characters, “Fundraising the Dead,” by Sheila Connolly will become your new favorite cup of tea.

You’ll recognize the City of Brotherly Love and delight in meeting Nell, who's a fundraiser, er, development director, for the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary with a huge gala.

“I’m the invisible person who keeps the money flowing,” Nell says. "Doesn’t every college grad want to get a degree and beg for money when she grows up?"

So, between writing and approving endless mailings, researching and writing grant proposals, Nell must also “curry favors from potential donors” and be a party planner.

But the society’s “famed vaults house at least two million books, documents, and ephemera, ranging from manuscript letters signed by William Penn and George Washington, to advertising flyers …”.

And it's Nell's job to make sure the doors stay open and the staff gets paid. She loves the historic documents. She loves her job. And as she'll tell you, she's pretty darn good at it.

Nell’s strong, smart and sassy — the kind of person you wish lived next door so you could chat about what it's like to smell or even touch artifacts that once had the first president's hands on them.

Some of those items were donated by Martha Terwillinger, a third-generation board member. It's around Martha and her family ties that this tale really twists and turns.

Nell says when Martha talks about “The War,” it can only mean The Revolution. And when she discovers that some of her family’s priceless documents have gone missing from the museum, the two hatch quite a scheme to get to the bottom of the thefts.

It’s not just Martha’s family’s donations that have gone missing. There's a pattern of unaccounted for expensive pieces — ones that private collectors would be willing to pay top dollar to own.

When the person in charge of recording and organizing the museum’s collection is found dead among the stacks, Nell’s determined to find out who committed the crime.

“Let me ask you," she says, "If you had to find a single piece of paper in your house, one that you hadn’t looked at for, oh, five years, how easy would it be for you? Then multiply it by a factor of a million, and maybe you’ll see our problem.”

Oh, and did I mention that Nell is doing the hokey-pokey with the museum’s director Charles Elliott Worthington, and he’s a suspect in the thefts?

I flew through 'Fundraising the Dead,' and I promise this is a book you won't want to put down. Then move onto Connolly's Orchard Mystery series, which includes 'One Bad Apple,' 'Rotten to the Core,' and 'Red Delicious Death.'

Lisa Allmendinger is a reporter for AnnArbor.com and writes Cozy Corner each Wednesday. She can be reached at lisaallmendinger@annarbor.com.