Sunday, December 28, 2008

Pg. 69: Tom Harper's "The Lost Temple"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Lost Temple by Tom Harper.

About the book, from the publisher:
For three thousand years, the world’s most dangerous treasure has been lost. Now the code that reveals its hiding place is about to be broken ...

Greece, 1947. Europe is just beginning to heal after World War II, but the fighting in Greece continues as a civil war is waged. Sam Grant, a disgraced ex–Special Operations Executive soldier and an adventurer by trade, is lured back to the Mediterranean by a secret from his past: six years ago, a dying archaeologist entrusted him with his life’s work—a leather notebook full of unintelligible notes written in Ancient Greek. When the KGB show up looking for the notebook, Grant sets out to protect the discoveries that the archaeologist lost his life for—and to find out what could be so valuable that the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service want it as well.

With help from a brilliant Oxford professor and a beautiful Greek archaeologist with her own secrets to hide, Grant follows the notebook to a hidden cave on Crete, where a tablet of mysterious writing has lain hidden for thousands of years. Deciphered, it could lead to one of the greatest prizes in history. But the treasure is as dangerous as it is valuable.

Seeking the places where history and myth collide, following the trail left by Homer in his epic poems of heroic warriors, vengeful gods, and treasure beyond anything known to man, Grant is plunged into a labyrinth of ancient cults, forgotten mysteries, and lost civilizations. But time is running out.

The secrets of the distant past may hold the key to the newest threats of the modern world....
Read an excerpt from The Lost Temple and view the trailer at Tom Harper's website.

Tom Harper was born in 1977 and grew up in West Germany, Belgium, and America before returning to England to study history at Lincoln College, Oxford. His conclusion to the short story “Death by the Invisible Hand” was published in The Economist in 1997, and his novels have been translated into twelve languages.

The Page 69 Test: The Lost Temple.

--Marshal Zeringue