This series was recommended to me recently because of my interest in archaeology and my love of reading mystery series. Since this is billed as an archaeological mystery series, it certainly seemed like the perfect fit.The Xibalba Murders, the first book in the series, seemed especially promising since it is set in Mexico and involves a mystery about a Mayan artifact and archeological dig. I've been fascinated by Mayan history ever since my long ago college days when I did a research paper about that culture for my Cultural Anthropology class. And so, I settled down to read the book with some enthusiasm.On the whole, I found the book to be mildly entertaining. There were things that I liked about it and things that i didn't like, but considered as a whole, it was okay.What I liked about it could be summed up as the Mayan aspects. The author names every chapter after a day in the Mayan calendar and she relates the events of that day to the characteristics which the Mayans attributed to the day. That was a clever way of telling the story.Also, throughout the book, Hamilton gives brief dissertations on various parts of Mayan mythology, especially as it relates to the Hero Twins and their battles with the Lords of Death, rulers of Xibalba, the Mayan underworld. These explanations were to the point and clearly stated, something that can be difficult to accomplish with that very convoluted mythology. They added a lot to the story and made the fascination with the potential of discovering a previously unknown Codex, which is at the center of the plot, more understandable.The plot itself was pretty interesting. A noted Mexican archeologist is on to what he believes will be a great discovery of a Mayan artifact. For some inexplicable reason (and this was a weakness in the plot), instead of turning to other archeologists for help, he calls his friend Lara McClintoch, an antiques dealer in Toronto, and asks her to come down to help him. McClintoch has just gone though a messy divorce and has had to sell her antiques store and divide the profits with her ex. Now, she is at loose ends and jumps at the chance to go to Mexico, to the little Yucatan town of Merida to aid her friend.When she gets there, she receives a message from the archaeologist delaying their meeting. Soon the action heats up and dead bodies are appearing around town - the first one discovered by Lara, which in the eyes of the local police, makes her the prime suspect.Into the mix comes a tall, dark, and handsome British-born archaeologist and his handsome and darker Mexican friend. Lara, of course, is almost immediately besotted with the Brit, which perhaps tells us everything we need to know about her judgment in men since the guy is obviously such a rotter!Okay, here's a thought. Why do mystery writers with women as their main characters seem to always feel they have to throw in that "tall, dark, and handsome" guy as a romantic interest for the woman? Did Miss Marple ever have a love interest? I don't think so, and yet she managed to solve mysteries just fine. Unlike Lara McClintoch who doesn't really solve the mystery so much as having its solution thrust upon her. Do you get the idea that i didn't much like Lara? Well, you would be correct in that deduction. She really came across as much too slow-witted to ever be a successful detective. I knew who the culprit(s) was(were) as soon as I met him/her and I found myself wanting to shake Ms. McClintoch as she made bad decisions at every turn. Moreover, Lara often trusts the wrong people and distrusts those she should trust. Not a good recommendation for a "detective."Well, this was the first in the series and it wasn't uniformly awful, just kind of meh. One of the attractions of reading series is that they often get better after the initial offering, so I think I will probably read a couple more in the series to give it every chance to grow on me. Maybe Lara will wise up a bit by then.
Hm. Well, not terrific. This series has come highly recommended by several folk whose opinions more often than not coincide with mine. I will therefore have a look at the next in this series, but this first one is not impressive. The identity of the Bad Guy was obvious from the very first meeting; there is considerable foolish, ham-handed exposition (e.g.: our heroine, a grad student in MesoAmerican studies, has also lived in Merida in the past, yet we have a scene with an archaeologist explaining the sacred ball game to her as if she’d never heard of it before); also ham-handed foreshadowing: by p.72, I not only knew who would be confronting the valiant lass in the obligatory climactic scene, I knew where it would take place, as we are given a tour of a scary underground archaeological dig, complete with dark narrow tunnels and deep, water-filled pits. There is more plotting dumbness – our heroine is almost discovered searching somebody’s office, accidentally drops his diary during her escape, and it falls in such a way that two subsequent searches of the room do not reveal it and she is able to retrieve it herself later; and also a couple of English errors that an editor should have caught: describing a child’s drawing, the author says that the tree, the house and the people are all on the same scale when she clearly means they are all the same size – if they were all on the same scale, they’d look normal – and the everpopular “ex-patriot” instead of “expatriate”, argh.
Do You like book The Xibalba Murders (2013)?
The premise of this book (and I presume the whole series) is mysteries that occur during archeological digs. The main protagonist is the owner of an antiquities store who travels the globe and gets involved in solving the mysteries that occur. At first I wasn't sure what I was going to think of this book, partly because I had just read a book that I literally could not put down, partly because it took a bit to get used to the writing style in this book. For example, the author begins a lot of sentences with BUT, and breaks things into separate sentences that I would leave as one. However, once I got into the story, I found it fascinating. I have been interested in Native American culture, (including the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas) since I was in high school and did a study project on them. This book had a good blend of mystery and details about the Maya culture. It is a typical mystery story in the vein of Agatha Christie, one where there are not a lot of plot twists. Although I figured out early on who was the most likely bad guy, I didn't quite figure out all of the villains. For that reason, I still enjoyed the story immensely and look forward to reading the rest of the series. I am giving the book a 3.5, but rounding up to a 4 because of the detail included on the Maya culture.
—Lyn (Readinghearts)
I really liked how the author threaded information in about the Mayan culture at the start of her chapters. This did not happen for the earlier chapters, but I enjoyed the quick narrative which smoothly morphed into the modern-day tale. Having the chapters marked as Mayan calendar days were also fun additions. I always appreciate a well-told spot of history. I can’t say the “who” of “who-dunnit” was a surprise. I figured it from the get-go. And compared to the historical chapter starts, the modern mystery seemed a bit simplistic. So Lara’s story was actually not my favorite part of the book. I wanted more from the Hero Twins, etc., that was given in little slices. One of my favorite moments was when Lara swam out of the cave into the lush landscape of hidden Mayan pyramids and roadways. I thought that was quite well described. I felt enchanted. The author is a talented writer and does her research well. I appreciated what she tried to do, and I would read another story of hers. However, I hope in the next one the mystery is a bit more mysterious.
—J. Else
I need to mention I received this book from GoodReads giveaways.A Canadian store owner Lara McClintoch is recently divorced. It seems to me lately having a main heroine suffering from a bitter divorce, but always finding tall, dark, and handsome guy (or looking for him really hard) is a necessary part of the book to be qualified as cozy mystery. I have a really hard time trying to picture Miss Marple searching for the Right Guy, but it did not prevent her from becoming one of the most famous female sleuths, by the way.Anyway, Lara receives a mysterious phone call from her Mexican friend who happened to be an archeologist. He hints he is on a hot trail of something and invites her to come to a Mexican town full of Mayan history to help him in the search. The moment she arrives the dead bodies start popping up left and right along with local politics, terrorists, and handsome guys. Lara is the only one who has all the clues to the goings-on, but she does not realize it.I will start with the good part. The plot was interesting with enough unexpected twists. The info dumps on Mayan culture were short and to the point; I liked them a lot and I learned from them a lot. Indiana Jones taught us archeology can be very exciting, this book only confirms it. I found myself saying, "It belongs to the museum!" a lot. So why did I give it such a low rating?I have a big problem with main heroine. Dear Lara, it is not you, it is me. We started on the wrong foot. One of the first things you said put me off: "Nothing is more tiring than sitting in an airport and a later a plane". How is about any physical labor? Lara is stupid as a log - there is no other more polite way to say it. You might believe Darwin Evolution Theory, or you might not - the point being it most definitely does not work in Lara's case. There is no way she could survive being this stupid up to her current age. She trusts exactly the wrong people, does not trust the right ones and makes the worst possible decisions at the moment all the time without fail. Her character easily cancels everything else what was good in the book. Fortunately there is some - albeit small in my eyes - hope for her as she finally realized her stupidity around ten pages before the end of the book. For this reason I am curious to see her in the next adventure which I will read soon. This review is a copy/paste of my BookLikes one: gene.booklikes.com/post/1001888/a-ver...
—Evgeny
