The Orkney Scroll: An Archaeological Mystery by Lyn Hamilton

From the Publisher

From the author who "turns every trip into an edge-of-your-seat adventure."*

A scam involving a fake Mackintosh writing cabinet-and murder-has antiques dealer Lara McClintoch traveling to Scotland's Orkney Islands, where she is pulled into a centuries-old Viking saga and a troubling quest that could end in danger.

Publishers Weekly

In Hamilton's entertaining 10th archeological mystery featuring Canadian antiques dealer Lara McClintoch (after 2005's The Moai Murders), one of Lara's colleagues, Trevor Wylie, sells a local collector a supposedly authentic Charles Rennie Mackintosh writing cabinet. After the cabinet is revealed to be a fake, Trevor turns up dead. Lara's determination to find out who knocked off Trevor-and who's getting rich knocking off forged antiques-leads her to Scotland's Orkney Islands. What begins as a simple case of furniture fraud gets endlessly more complicated. For starters, Lara keeps running into people she knows from back home, like Trevor's girlfriend, who is bereft not because of heartbreak but because Trevor died owing her money. In a plot that verges on being overly complex, Lara has to contend with ancient treasure maps, a Viking legend, drug-running, money laundering and another murder. Still, Hamilton is a funny writer. Lara's culture shock in super-friendly Orkney is especially humorous. (Apr.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

"Who could resist a tale," asks Hamilton, "that ends with the words, before he went mad Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs"?A centuries-old Viking fable resurfaces in Toronto when a treasure map supposedly leading to Bjarni Haraldsson's cache turns up in a $1.5 million writing cabinet purchased by bazillionaire collector Blair Baldwin. Unfortunately for Blair, the desk is a fake, and Lara McClintoch (The Moai Murders, 2005, etc.), the dealer who authenticated it for him, finds her reputation in tatters. Even worse, the dealer who sold it to him, Trevor Wylie, finds his head in tatters when an axe is embedded in his skull. Did Blair do it? Lara thinks not. She tracks Trevor's roots and the desk's provenance back to Glasgow and then the Orkney Island settlement of St. Margaret's Hope, where she bumps into Wylie's last girlfriend Willow, who's reticent about why she's there, and Percy, last seen ferreting through Trevor's Toronto antique shop and now willing to show Lara Neolithic Orkney stones and WWII battlements. When he's stabbed and his dying words echo those of the Bjarni fable, Lara focuses on another collector's skullduggery. It all leads to more deaths and last-chapter complexities even more incredible than Bjarni's saga. About five subplots too many, but Hamilton makes the islands of Orkney so beguiling they ought to be listed as a top-ten travel destination.

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