All about the books we love

The Tomb of Zeus by Barbara Cleverly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A 3.5 read that I didn't round up mostly because of some personal issues with the main character and the imbalance between solving a mystery and the other plot line. Letty is one of the 'modern women' in the 1920s and is off to make her mark in the world of archaeology. To that end, she's in Crete, taken on by Theodore Russell on the advice of Letty's mentor. He is rushing to out do Arthur Evans and discover the titular tomb and isn't going to turn down help. That said he's also not really happy to have a woman so he plants her somewhere she might find some small artifacts and gives her diggers he's irritated with.

On her first day, Letty meets Phoebe, Theo's much younger wife, George his kind hearted son and Gunning, a man she already knows who had been set as a babysitter earlier on in a different setting by her father. There is so much past history referenced that I thought there were previous books. And that's where I get annoyed with Letty. She's constantly blowing hot and cold with Gunning (an ex soldier from WWI with war wounds) and she's also either gung-ho or quailing so it got annoying fast.

Phoebe meets an untimely end but is it suicide as she has reasons? Letty doesn't believe it and neither does Marianni the detective. So there is some imbalance that happens as Letty works on the mystery and the whole archeology thing falls into the background for far too long.

The mystery however is nicely done. Phoebe's past, George's too set up the clues and red herrings well and the past has everything to do with this, right down to the history of Crete itself (though this book also started out on a sour note for me because it had an author's note, condemning the colonialism/ take over of Crete by other people which is good but then goes on to say how gentle England tread on the Island which really isn't that true. The museum took far more than its fair share of artifacts from Crete. I think she was trying to reference the Ottoman empire and a real world slaughter that happened but it came off badly, though that slaughter plays a role in this)

Would I read another one? I probably would. Letty wasn't awful, just a bit annoying. I love that we had an archaeologist detective that isn't in Egypt for a change.



View all my reviews