It seemed like an omen that the week I was deliberating over whether or not to participate in the crime fiction alphabet meme this year I would be reading two crime fiction books which both happen to feature an archaeologist. And so it was decided, I will participate in the meme (at least semi-regularly though I don’t promise to complete all letters) and I will write my posts about the themes, sub-genres and plot elements that crop up regularly in the crime fiction I love.
I have a sneaking suspicion that archaeologists are over-represented in crime fiction, given that I don’t run across them in real life nearly as often as I do in crime fiction. Why does the profession lends itself to inclusion in this genre far more than say laundrette manager or dentist? I guess it is because the profession itself already has an air of mystery and romance about it. What child hasn’t fantasized about getting dirty and digging things up for a living? Or is that just me?
These are the archaeologists I can remember meeting in my crime fiction reading, please leave a comment with the names of any more you know of that I might need to investigate.
The first archaeologist I came across in crime fiction was Amelia Peabody, who since 1975 has starred in 19 adventures set in Egypt/Africa/the Middle East. The books by Elizabeth Peters are a mixture of historical fiction, amateur sleuthing and the discovering of ancient Egyptian artifacts. Crocodile on the Sandbank introduces us to the force of nature that is Amelia Peabody, (recently orphaned and now independently wealthy) and her soon-to-be husband. The series is still going strong with the release last year of A River in the Sky which places Amelia and friends in Palestine just prior to the outbreak of the first world war.
Jessica Mann, who studied archaeology herself and is married to an archaeologist, published a series of six books featuring Tamara Hoyland who was an agent of the British secret service and an archaeologist . The first of these, published in 1981 is Funeral Sites and though I think I’ve read them all (in the days before my wonderful spreadsheet so I can’t know for sure) the only one I can remember much about is the fourth book, Death Beyond the Nile, in which Tamara joins an archaeological tour of Egypt in order to thwart the dastardly schemes of a woman who is threatening British security. I remember the book being full of fun characters and lots of dastardly plotting. A teensey bit of googling tells me that Mann also has a series of three earlier books starting with The Only Security (1971) which feature an archaeology professor as the heroine.
While Lyn Hamilton‘s Canadian heroine Lara McClintock is not herself an archaeologist she is an antiques dealer who specialises in archaeological objects and the books, starting with 1997′s The Xibalba Murders take us on adventures all over the globe looking at a fascinating range of ancient cultures including the Mayans, the Celts, the Etruscans and even the people of Easter Island.
Beverly Connor wrote about the first forensic archaeologist I can remember reading about, in 1996′s A Rumor of Bones. Her heroine is Lindsay Chamberlain who in this first novel discovers that the bones police believe belong to a missing girl they have been searching for belong to a different child who appears to have been sexually abused. Eventually they work out there are bones of more than one missing child on the site which is when things take an extremely grim turn.
I can attest to the fact that Erin Hart‘s 2003 novel Haunted Ground, about a well preserved head discovered in the peat bogs of Ireland, is a book you don’t forget quickly. The hero of the novel, Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire, works with an American anthropologist to solve both a historic crime and a present-day one. This is a very dark and atmospheric book set in a closed community.
And of course last year I became besotted by the Elly Griffiths novels featuring Dr Ruth Galloway who is a forensic archaeologist at the fictional North Norfolk University. Both The Crossing Places and The Janus Stone were great books, full of wonderful characters, lots of atmosphere and curious mysteries. The third book in the series, The House at Seas End, was one of the two books that prompted this post (I finished it yesterday, review to come later this week).
The other book I am reading (via audio) this week is Kate Ellis‘ A Perfect Death in which the protagonist, who is a policeman, has a best friend who is an archaeologist and whose investigations seem to always involve the subject. In this book there is a grizzly murder on the site of an ancient one and records of the site’s excavation have vanished! I stumbled across this book on special at audible but now realise the whole series (this is book 13 of what is soon to be 16) features things archaeological so there’s a backlog for me to trawl.
Are there more archaeological mysteries you’ve read? Why do you think this profession is so highly represented in crime fiction? Do you know any real-life archaeologists who lead such exciting, dangerous lives?
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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week.
This is the second round of the meme which was first run from late 2009 to early 2010. My contributions that time were discussions of books with one word titles.
Z4CK by Kevin Milne appealed to my inner geek. The book starts out in the near future in Edinburgh, Scotland and we see a future with some things I would dearly love to see (such as the flights to Australia from Scotland that take less than 3 hours) and other parts that I’m not so keen on (such as everyone carrying a single device that contains all of their personal information and a single company called Sec-Net having a monopoly on the security of that information). We then learn, in flashback, the story of Duncan Steele who created a program, called Z4CK which is an abbreviation for something I can’t remember, that allows him to bypass any network’s security and was nearly killed for it. Framed for a murder he did not commit Duncan has to use all his computer hacking skills to keep himself alive and out of jail.
Y2K was thriller writer R J Pineiro’s second book to address the predicted digital doomsday (his other one was called 01-01-2000 and was published the same year). It was one of the more bizarre efforts at the genre within a genre and if memory serves me properly involved a villainous Slobodan Milosevic (presumably taking time out from committing genocide and whatnot) developing a scheme to bring the US to its knees by making all its computers non-compliant with Y2K requirements. His evil henchmen are battled by a female ex-CIA agent whose name escapes me but I do recall that she left the CIA after many years when her lover was killed but is forced back into the world of espionage and people killing each other for nonsensical reasons by the hunt for a world-saving millennium bug code. I don’t recall much else about the book.
Leslie Charteris published his first book, X Esquire, in 1927. You don’t have to look too hard to see the genesis of the series Charteris’ is most famous for featuring Simon Templar (a.k.a. The Saint) which started two books later. X Esquire starred a chap by the name of Terry Mannering who took it upon himself to knock off some evil doers who were attempting to flood Britain with poisonous cigarettes (more poisonous than usual that is). Signing himself anonymously X, esquire in his communiqué’s Mannering matched wits with an unconventional Scotland Yard detective by the name of Bill Kennedy who also appeared in Charteris’ second novel.
The series isn’t likely to set the world on fire but it is well written, solidly paced and, most important for my cosy reading, full of gentle humour. Melanie’s Aunt Peg is a judge of champion poodles and Melanie’s staunchest supporter. She’s a great character and, for my money, funnier and more interesting than Stephanie Plum’s loopy grandmother. Melanie is a single mum (though she does have a love interest) with lots of irons in the fire and her juggling of work, family and poodles is credibly portrayed. I grew up in a dog-showing household and the antics and obsessions of dog showing fanatics depicted here are very realistic and offer lots of humorous potential. My recommendation for a lazy afternoon for dog lovers who can see the funny side of their obsession is to read Watchdog then check out 
Sydney Bauer is an Australian author who sets her books in the US and seems to have grasped the intricacies of the US political and judicial systems well. Undertow really is an old-fashioned legal thriller, focusing on the ways in which events, and people, can be manipulated to appear differently depending on interpretation. It is perhaps more than a little sad that I found it so easy to believe in a character like Rudolph Haynes who freely abuses his power as a politician to achieve his nastily racist ideals and a little less easy to swallow the ‘good guy’ and very likable Cavanagh.
I admit I am something of a sucker for these slightly old-fashioned whodunits of cleverly constructed plots and groups of people with mysterious secrets. In Stranglehold Max Tully has some secrets from his childhood that influence his behaviour decades later and all the members of his household have secret desires or grudges or fears that come into play at some point in the story. The story is more believable than many in the genre for several reasons including the facts that the body count stops at one and the family relationships are very realistically depicted.
