Here is some insight
into the research of
Sirocco, Storm over Land and Sea -
Book 2 of the Legends of the Winged Scarab series.
Sirocco, Storm over Land and Sea -
Book 2 of the Legends of the Winged Scarab series.
For this modern-day quest to find and decipher the ancient Golden Tablets
from Book 1, I incorporated real places and timely political events, namely the
2011 Arab Spring uprising. The regrettable chaos it brought to Egypt made many of my
fictional events plausible.
In Sirocco, Storm over Land and Sea, my
Egyptologist protagonist, the exotic Dr. Naunet Klein, is sent to Cairo and Luxor where she meets a charming stranger. After a weekend invitation to Hurgada, she is kidnapped and spends some days
(rather involuntarily) imprisoned in a village on southern Crete.
Loutro, then as now, can only be
reached by boat or by climbing over a treacherous mountain path.
Loutro, then as now, can only be
reached by boat or by climbing over a treacherous mountain path. 
It is from those cliffs rising straight out of the
sea that she witnesses the terrifying demise of a South American
by-hook-or-by-crook art collector’s luxury yacht, the Bucanero I.
On board is a (real) stolen Rembrandt.
(Check out the cover description in the LookInside on Amazon.com). If, by any chance, you know of this painting’s whereabouts (perhaps in your Uncle Guido's safe room), the FBI still promises a huge reward for the recovery of this priceless painting.
Lorenzo, my gangster-art collector, later restores a Russian ghost ship –
the real Lyubov Orlova – which he
registered as the Bucanero II, out of
Caracas.
In Sirocco,
we also reconnect with my opportunistic Con Extraordinaire, Edward
Guernsey-Crock.
Throughout
Books 2-5 of the
Legends of the Winged Scarab,
the increasingly less charming Englishman skitters toward his just deserves.
Is he someone from my past life upon whom I heaped vengeance for wrongs done to me?
Legends of the Winged Scarab,
the increasingly less charming Englishman skitters toward his just deserves.
Is he someone from my past life upon whom I heaped vengeance for wrongs done to me?
That’s for me to know, for you to
imagine –
and for the indigenous Cretan Kri-Kri
to keep silent about as they nimbly scale the craggy coast of Crete.
(Do you spot them in this picture?)
and for the indigenous Cretan Kri-Kri
to keep silent about as they nimbly scale the craggy coast of Crete.
(Do you spot them in this picture?)
Sirocco, Storm over Land and Sea
is available at Amazon.com for Kindle and in Print.
is available at Amazon.com for Kindle and in Print.
Excerpt
Dr. William Jefferson Browning, the Boston Museum’s sixty-year-old
Head of Research, was never on time. ‘Occupational hazard,’ the Einstein-maned
scientist decreed when someone suggested he might think about installing an
alarm clock in his lab.
The story went
that after a vacation trip to Europe, Bill Browning was overheard to complain
at a museum board meeting, that ‘Florence would have been great, except for all
those tourists.’ At which point an illustrious member of the old Boston
establishment supposedly remarked, ‘And what the hell did you think you were,
Bill!’
It provided a
rare snicker for the thirty-plus trustees. Over time, their meetings had become
more terse than academic, and they welcomed any morsel of good humor thrown
their way.
Bingham Adams,
the seemingly forever museum director, was affable and well liked. He was an
excellent judge of a good brushstroke. There was a saying among the crusty old
Bostonians: ‘Before you invite Bingham to dinner, lock up all your Singer
Sargents.’
More often than not, Adams would walk out of one of those patrician
brownstone homes encircling Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill with a host’s
unplanned contribution of a stern forefather gazing from his gilded frame.
While this was
great for the collections and the museum’s standing in the art world, it became
painfully clear that Adams sorely lacked in administrative talents.
The
venerable institution’s cash flow was in dire straits. The board elected a new
president.
George Searing, the business-savvy fifty-six-year-old CEO of a
fertilizer company, was thick-set, demanding and utterly impervious to the
tender psyches of the art world. But he scythed and bullied the Grande Old Dame back into the black.
Bingham Adams and his curators hated him.
* * *
Legends Of The Winged Scarab Series:
