Aided by Tomas, an archaeologist, and Ari, an Iraqi photojournalist—two men with their own secrets to hide—John races against time to unearth the dark history behind the old science of alchemy: Is the notion of turning lead into gold possible after all?
Against his will John is taken back to Iraq. Awaiting him is a fabulous underground treasure trove and the truth behind a famous story the world believes is only a myth.
August 6, 2012
McIntosh’s debut, the first in the Mesopotamian trilogy, will strike many thriller readers as old hat, despite its having won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for best unpublished novel. When art dealer John Madison responds to a phone call for help from business associate Hal Vanderlin, Madison discovers Vanderlin dead of an apparent heroin overdose in the garden of his Manhattan townhouse. A femme fatale Madison encounters at the scene confesses to assisting in Vanderlin’s death and demands that Madison reveal the location of a stolen artifact. Madison flees, but soon gets caught up in an international treasure hunt. When not evading bad guys, he is trying to decipher clues Vanderlin left behind concerning a seventh-century B.C. Neo-Assyrian stone tablet containing a biblical prophecy, an object that once belonged to Madison’s stepbrother, who recently perished in a car accident. Neither the story line nor the lead is particularly memorable. Agent, Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg.