Clare
Hills trained as an archaeologist, but got married before
she could put her skills to use. Now her husband is dead,
and her former tutor David has invited her to join him to
look through the effects of recently deceased and legendary
archaeologist Gerald Hart. Back in the early 1970s, Hart led
a dig on the Hungerbourne Barrows, a site where prehistoric
gold had been found. The first thing Clare does is unearth
a valuable document that everybody thought had been destroyed;
now the dig that Hart had mysteriously halted can be resumed.
But there must have been a reason for stopping the dig…
If you enjoy mysteries with an archaeological theme as made
popular by writers like Kate Ellis and Elly Griffiths, this
is another one, and possibly the start of a new series. The
author is herself an archaeologist and this debut is set in
Wiltshire, where she works on the World Heritage sites of
Stonehenge and Avebury. Clare has never worked as an archaeologist
but has to cope not only with her first real dig but, trying
to find out who might be trying to kill her and sabotage the
work. It is not a difficult case to guess, and despite not
being a very long novel, it still seemed rather slow. Clare
has a rather tepid attraction to one of the characters, has
to sort through some personal problems and displays a tendency
to rush foolishly into dangerous situations. She gets rescued
rather a lot, and the book does get fairly exciting in the
final chapters as there is a rush to unmask the killer. Overall
it reads like a first novel and I can imagine that, if is
the first in a series, we will learn more about the characters
and enjoy more convoluted plots. A relaxing read for the beach.
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