THE
AFRICAN QUEST: AN ARCHAEOLOGY MYSTERY
By: Lyn Hamilton
Berkley Publishing Group, New York
February 2001
The African Quest is Lyn Hamilton’s
fifth book in a series that began some six years ago with The Xibalba Murders.
The series is a delightful addition to the ever-growing sub-genres of
mysteries and thrillers that use archaeology as an integral part of the
background and plot. Ms. Hamilton
is improving with each addition to this series, both in terms of plot and
character development as well as her overall writing skills.
In The
African Quest, her heroine,
Canadian-based antique dealer Lara McClintoch, leads an “antique and
archaeology” tour to Tunisia, an exotic land of Roman ruins and modern Arab
cities. We are introduced to her
band of tourists—a motley group if ever there was one, and before long Lara
finds herself almost stumbling over dead bodies—most of whom are (or were)
paying members of her tour group! Not
only is this bad for business—the tour was a public relations gambit suggested
by Lara’s ex-husband and still business partner—but the remaining members of
the group may well be in danger as Lara’s feverish investigations hint
strongly that the murderer comes from within the group and that the reason for
the killings is somehow inextricably linked to the tour itself.
Roman gold, ancient coins, and competing underwater archaeologists are
mixed into this stew of murder, mayhem and intrigue and we as readers are
treated to some ancient history (the Punic Wars), some very descriptive travel
writing of a fascinating part of the world, and a complex whodunit with some
wonderfully colorful (and weird) characters.
It
is interesting to note that Ms. Hamilton has, in fact, conducted an “antique
and archaeology tour” to Malta in conjunction with one of her earlier Lara
McClintoch novels. In her
acknowledgements, she assures us that those members of her 1999 “Maltese
Goddess” tour were nothing like the group of churlish misfits described in African Quest, but the
descriptions of those characters is so lively and vivid that one wonders if
perhaps just one or two members of her Malta group might have served as
models.
Back
to Review Page
|
