Fact in Fiction - Part 2 of 5

Here is some insight into the research of  
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.

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.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009BQZ1JY

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?  

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?)

Sirocco, Storm over Land and Sea 
is available at Amazon.com for Kindle and in Print.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008Y6GXZ8   

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.

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 Legends Of The Winged Scarab Series:

Amazon-US

 Amazon-UK

Fact in Fiction - Part 4 of 5

The Crystal Curse 

(Book 4 of the Legends of the Winged Scarab series).

http://www.amazon.com/B00ZCLW7EY

Sailing around the island of Malta on their way from the Canary Islands to Crete, my protagonists must skirt a real  number of oil rigs surrounding this historically significant island. They are often towed through busy shipping channels creating hazards to transiting vessels (yes, there is an incident in the book).

  -- Remember the Malta Conference held January 30 to February 3, 1945 between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill planning a final campaign against the Germans. They also agreed on the undesirability of the Red Army pushing into Central Europe.

-- This was followed by the Yalta Conference in Crimea (February 4–11, 1945), between Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Premier Joseph Stalin, divvying up war-torn Europe by demanding the unconditional surrender of Germany, and other then-secret agreements.

In The Crystal Curse, once again, the new leaders of the supervolcano-devastated world plot on Malta, with China and South America in the fore. Here, I touch on the island-building fortifications by the Chinese on and around the hotly disputed Spratley Islands in the South China Seas.

If you think "well, that's far away," think again. This YouTube video may just tell us of how China ramps up its island-building for military purposes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTPMHC7zHY

 

But mostly, together with my “goodies and baddies,” we explore the dangers and wonders of the Lost Labyrinth of Egypt near Hawara in the Fayum. The complex is deemed to predate Egypt's Old Kingdom by thousands of years.

This ancient underground maze was off-limits to researchers, and until something huge was proven by ground-penetrating laser,  the Egyptian Government largely denied its existence. Were they hiding something sinister or too valuable for it to be explored? 

Here a brief excerpt from an interesting article:

  "The labyrinth is said to be an extraordinary underground complex which could hold the key to mankind’s history. ... there, we could find details about unknown civilizations in history, great empires, and rulers that lived on the planet before history as we know it began."

 https://www.ancient-code.com/researchers-confirm-giant-ancient-egyptian-underground-labyrinth-exists-and-could-rewrite-history/

 

 But back to the fiction in The Crystal Curse: 

 Will Naunet and Jonathan escape with their lives as the Curse of El-Hanash, the Crystal Snake, seems to befall all who enter the Lost Labyrinth.

Excerpt:

One by one, the heavy tablets were handed down the dangling starboard gangway and lifted into the A&N’s impressive captain’s launch. Hovering on the upper steps were an anxious Lorenzo and a very jittery Jabari. Despite both men suspecting they had lost their own claim to ownership of the ancient gold, every time the launch’s bumpers clanged against the small bobbing platform, the two men winced.

“Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” 

Jabari adopted a conspirator’s tone. “What if he sails off in the middle of the night with our gold?”

“In the middle of the night, you and I will be on the A&N.” 

Lorenzo’s mood had turned as dark as the ominous haze bunching up on the southern horizon. “

 As soon as we’ve loaded the last of this lot, I want you to get my group together to be ferried on over.” By his group, he meant himself and Edward, as well as Jabari, Zahra, and Aziz. Cheryl and a more than reluctant Naunet made up the rest to spend the night on the Russian mega-yacht.

 Lorenzo pulled the two crystal halves from his pocket and handed them to Jabari.

“Here. Before we leave, have Browning glue these back together. And make sure the Wilkins woman knows her hocus-pocus. If I can’t persuade Alexei this thing has special powers, we’ll all be taking a long swim.”

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