Terry Stanfill
Story Merchant
9601 Wilshire Blvd. #1202, Beverly Hills CA 90210
9780615657547, $14.99, www.storymerchant.com/books.html
In 1953, archaeologist Rene Joffroy leads a dig near Vix, Burgundy. He believes the fields below Mont Lassois contain an ancient burial site. The excavation finds an incredibly preserved krater and a tomb of a two and a half millennia woman surrounded by treasure. Joffroy and others wonder who she was and why foreign items like an urn were buried in France.
In 2007 Venice, American magazine writer Bianca Evans Caldwell and Italian archaeologist Giovanni de Serlo meet at the wedding of family members Alegrea Bona Dea and Jonathan Evans. They enjoy discussing their love of the past with the mystery of Vix enthralling both of them. She returns to New York while he goes back to a dig Puglia, Italy. However, she begins having dreams about Zatoria; a woman whom Bianca thinks is long dead. She returns to Italy and with Giovanni's help, begins to follow the trail of the enigmatic Vix Krater.
This is an exciting thriller that grips readers from the moment the heroine dreams of Zatoria and never slows down until the protagonists make a startling connection between the Vix corpse and ancient British mythos. Part of the fun is Terry Stanfill offering a viable solution to the five century BC real Vix Krater is the insight into archaeology without slowing down the wonderful storyline. Although the relationship between the author and the archeologist at times seems forced, this is a super thriller.