The Night Villa
Carole Goodman
Ballantine, Aug 2008, $14.00
ISBN: 9780345479600
University of Texas Classics Professor Dr. Sophie Chase knows she is fortunate to be alive when cultist Dale Henry, ex boyfriend of promising classics student Agnes Hancock, starts firing a gun at those attending an interview. Although shook up, Sophie joins a special reenactment in Capri. John Lyros is sponsoring the rebuilding of an exact replica of a Herculaneum villa and will use an information technology program to interpret the burnt scrolls that somewhat have been salvaged from the volcanic ruins.
However, Sophie’s Italian dig turns sinister when her former boyfriend Ely, who vanished five years ago apparently into the same cult as Dale joined, sends her a message by returning a book he borrowed from her. Meanwhile a scroll found amidst the ruins written by a visiting Roman insists the NIGHT VILLA was a place for blood, sex and duplicity. In the labyrinth below the city, Sophie will find much of the same as what happened to a free woman in 79 AD.
This is an engaging academic thriller with a delightful link between modern day archaeology and the Ancient World; mostly through the scrolls. Sophie is a terrific lead player holding together the two prime parts of the novel while she and her cohorts dig into the past at the same time struggling to survive the present. Fans will enjoy Carole Goodman’s fine tale and seek her previous literary mystery, (THE SONNET LOVER.
Harriet Klausner
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