Lara McClintoch is the half-owner of an antiques shop in Toronto. One of her customers, an internationally famous architect and world-class jerk, wants to hire her to go to Malta to set up his newly built house there. He wants her to oversee the delivery and placement of furniture and see that the house is ready for a big soiree that he's planning to entertain various highly important people.Lara, with some misgivings, agrees to take the assignment, but when she arrives in Malta, she finds the house still not completed and workmen in a feverish race to get everything done on time.Soon after she arrives, strange things start happening. She sees a mysterious hooded figure at the edge of the garden at night. Then a cat is murdered and left on the property. The brake lines on the car she had been given to use are cut. And perhaps creepiest of all, an odd and obnoxious man whom she first saw on the plane keeps turning up everywhere she goes in Malta. It seems apparent that someone is trying very hard to scare and/or warn her.The architect's housekeeper and her husband and son are on hand to assist Lara, but she feels intuitively that something is not as it should be.Finally, the furniture arrives and Lara notices that one of the pieces is different from the pieces that were chosen back in Toronto. Instead of an armoire, there is a large chest. She opens it up and inside she finds the body of the architect. Someone has put an end to his jerkitude by murdering him. There seems to be no lack of possible suspects, his wife being perhaps first on the list.The first question to be settled is, where did the murder happen? Was it back in Canada or when the plane had a layover in Rome? It takes a while to settle this question definitively, but in the meantime, the RCMP sends one of their sergeants over to assist in the investigation since the man killed was a Canadian citizen. The mystery deepens further when the odd man from the plane also turns up dead. Murdered. Is there a connection between the two murders and does it have anything to do with some allegedly lost treasure on Malta that is somehow related to the worship of the Great Goddess?Complexities and complications abound and red herrings are strewn all over the place, but Lara manages to assist the local Maltese police and the visiting Mountie in their inquiries.I liked the fact that the author started each chapter with a brief entry that addressed some aspect of the history of the Great Goddess and of Malta, and I liked the character of the feminist Professor Stanhope who was engaged in teaching her students about the Great Goddess. However, I felt that Lyn Hamilton did this character a disservice in the arc of the story that she gave her. She was very stereotypically described as a dried-up spinster who fell madly in love with the first younger guy who showed up and showed an interest in her. That just didn't mesh with her image as an accomplished historian with a deep interest in and understanding of the Goddess culture. I felt this book was an improvement over the first entry in the archeological mystery series. Lara seemed not quite as ditsy as she was in the first one and her interaction with the visiting Mountie seemed fraught with possibilities. I wonder if we'll meet him again in later books.
Second in the excellent series of archaeological mysteries by Lyn Hamilton featuring antique shop owner/designer Lara McClintoch, this was a good as the first. Lara now has part ownership of her shop back. The woman she sold it to does not like traveling and shopping abroad and dealing with customs so Lara buys back in so she can do this work. A rich architect who treats his older, rich wife like crap (he flirts with women right to her face) comes in and buys tens of thousands of dollars of items and asks Lara to travel to his homeland of Malta to decorate his new house , all expenses paid, for a social event he will hold for many diplomats. Right away, trouble follows Lara. The house is creepy the first night as a thick fog rolls in and she (there alone) sees someone in a cape and hood creeping about the back yard . Another day, a cat is killed and hung in the yard. The car brakes are cut. An odd man she saw on the plane keeps showing up everywhere she goes and finally tries to run her off the road. She later runs into him in a crypt where he seems to be trying to bargain with her then runs away when he realizes his mistake.The housekeeper and her husband have ties no one realizes with the architect. 18 years earlier, he got her pregnant and ran away forcing her to marry her husband. When the furniture shipment finally shows up, there is a strange chest with it- and the architect is found dead inside it. Marissa (the housekeeper's husband) had been away on a mystery trip to Rome (where the architect was killed). Lara is forced to take things into her own hands as the murders roll on. She gets involved with the son's girlfriend's school group who is putting on a play about the goddess worshipped on Malta long ago, finds herself involved with a Canadian Mountie (the architect was from Canada) who has come as a consultant on the case, and gets clues from a man called Hedgehog after the man who tried to run her off the road tells her there is great danger then she finds him impaled on a knight's sword in a museum. My only beef is her portrayal of a feminist professor as being an "old maid" type yet falling madly in love with a younger guy who showed up. She turned this character into a stick character full of wrong and stupid stereotypes.
Do You like book The Maltese Goddess (2013)?
I wish we could give 3 1/2 star ratings! I like this mystery which is the second in Lyn Hamilton's series featuring Lara McClintoch. I learned something about the history and geography of Malta in the process of solving the mystery. Lara travels from Toronto to Malta to help a famouse architect get his new house set up for an upcoming party. Murder and mayhem follow Lara, and she criss-crosses the island of Malta in a clunker of a car which provides some pretty funny scenes in the book. I liked it. I didn't LOVE it, but then I think that I'm a pretty hard grader when it comes to handing out review stars. Liking a book is a good thing! I liked it enough that I will read the third book in the series when time permits. Sadly, Lyn Hamilton died in September of 2009, so there won't be any more Archaeolocial Mysteries forthcoming.
—Krista
I need to mention I received this book from GoodReads giveaways.In the second book of Lara McClintoch Archeological Mystery Lara goes to Malta to decorate a client's house with furniture he bought from her. Anybody including Lara would consider going in the middle of Canadian winter to a country in the middle of Mediterranean sea to do a job which is not exactly physically demanding a vacation. In Lara's case it turned out to be anything but. At first there was a cultural clash with some very hilarious results, later some mysterious people tried to get her scared for the reasons unknown and finally a dead body shows up. In short Lara got much more excitement from her so-called vacation than she bargained for.My first disclaimer would be my fairly common complaint and a question: who writes the blurbs? The one for this book gives half of the fun away and reveals something which happened in the last quarter of pages; avoid reading it if you have any intention at all to read, or even look at the book.This novel is a definite improvement over the series' debut. My major complaint about the latter was Lara's mental abilities, or the lack of thereof. This time I was on a lookout for her idiocy and I was surprised by the fact that she acted like a complete retard exactly once. She also made a highly questionable choice in the very end, but I am not going to discuss it to avoid spoilers.Another positive side of the novel: how many works of literature can you recall which take place on Malta? According to the book this is a very colorful place, but California - as an example - really beats it as a popular place for a book settings. Some scattered bits of Malta history were good and interesting.I mentioned scattered bits of Malta history; they really were tiny bits. I would love to have more info, like Mayan history in the first book - something the latter has done right. The Goddess poem in the beginning of every chapter was overdone and did not do much, or anything at all for the novel. To my surprise despite the series' title there was no archeology involved at all.Lara's attitude can surely use some improvement. She behaves like a (stereo)typical suburban dweller that badmouths police for any reason and without one, but runs to them for help at the first sign of trouble. Her behavior toward one of the policemen is not excusable, period. It was not as noticeable in the first book, but it is here. One more observation and a question: do people from Toronto really consider -15C to be a deep freeze, like it was mentioned by Lora? In other places of Canada this temperature makes a nice and warm winter day.Considering all of the good and bad parts this is still a fast read which deserves 3 firm stars. This review is a copy/paste of my BookLikes one: http://gene.booklikes.com/post/100660...
—Evgeny
