The Maltese Goddess

This is the second volume of the Archaeolgical Mystery series by Lyn Hamilton. Lara McClintoch, co-owner of a Toronto Antique shop is hired by a famous Maltese architect to furnish his new home in Malta. JHe is in a rush as he will be holding an important business party in less than a week. Shipping items from Canada too Malta has become a problem: French transportation strikes and a blizzard threaten. The architect's wife won't be attending the party, so Lara has to go to Malta to prepare the house and organize the furnishings. Upon arrival Lara stays in the nearly empty home. The housekeeper, husband and son help Lara in the preparations. However, despite the beautiful surroundings Lara is feeling very uneasy. Something is seriously show more wrong. A school Goddess play, Murders, a Canadian Mountie, and political intrigue make Lara's stay anything but relaxing. I enjoyed the beautiful description of Malta and the Goddess temples, the oldest Neolithic temples on earth. Matter of fact, I had to research a bit about these temples. Absolutely amazing I must add. Lots of history and background are woven into this tightly written mystery. It gets a bit too wordy at the end, as the author tries to tie up loose ends. All in all a good read. show less

A wealthy and famous architect whom Lara knows purchases an expensive load of furniture and carpets from her little antiquities shop in Toronto. Then he invites her to fly off ASAP and set it all up in his Malta residence, in preparation for him to host some European VIPs in about a month. It's a lot more involved than that, because the construction isn't even finished yet, so she babysits that process for a couple of weeks. And then she discovers a body in an odd place... Uh-oh.

A good portion of the novel is concerned with the murder investigation, as well as her involvement in a local girls' theatrical production, the caretakers of the residence, and their son. She makes the acquaintance of an RCMP (a Mountie, that is) who is sent show more over to help investigate, because the murder may have occurred in Canada. There are some interesting twists along the way that kept me surprised and intrigued right up to the end.

The book is full of fascinating history, sweeping scenic vistas, and cultural details that really brought Malta to life for me. And I absolutely adore the protagonist, Lara. Yes, I'm likely to read the rest of the books in this series. This is only the second.

I obtained this volume for free at Smashwords during a big sale in 2016. The entire Lara McClintoch series was offered for free, except for the first book which was $1.99. (Seemed a bit odd for the first to be paid when the rest are free; opposite the usual procedure, but totally OK with me! Thanks again to the heirs of Lyn Hamilton.)

The editing and production of the e-book are good. There are a few spots where I could tell the text was input via OCR from a printed copy and the proof-reader may have been dozing or the automatic spell-checker went on the fritz: a few occurrences of "tum" for "turn", "modem" for "modern"... That sort of thing... And one occurrence of "sbarply", heh heh. (As usual, I kept notes in case anyone want the list of typos.)

Oh, if you read this, whisper to me what you think of Chapter 14. If this comment seems meaningless and just makes you say "huh?", then maybe I'm over-reacting. LOL. Never mind. show less

I previously read the book prior to this, The Xibalba Murders, and was so taken with it that its been a 7 year gap until I picked up this, the next in the series.

Once again, I can't say I'm blown away with character depth, plot development, adventure or the archeological mystery, of which there is very little.

Each chapter starts off with a bit of a blurb from the 'Maltese Goddess' which is rather pointless and has not much to do with anything in the story, and the story itself isn't particularly engaging either.

I would classify this as airport fiction, it will help you pass time if you're trapped with no other options but to stare out a window, but where other options exist you'll be wanting to take them. This simply isn't that great show more and I certainly wouldn't call it an archeological mystery as it's more of a murder mystery or furniture mystery if anything at all. show less

I would give the book 2½ stars partly because this Kindle edition has a few editing errors that were annoying. However, my biggest complaint was the unnecessary 'talk' of the Goddess at the beginning of each chapter -- I liked it at first but it didn't really have anything to do with the story so I lost interest. Much of the history of Malta contained in those section was also presented in the main story line as well so it didn't even have that purpose.

I also found it extremely distracting in the climax of the mystery for the author to suddenly switch from writing in the past tense to present tense (just for that one chapter).

I like this series. The main character Lara McClintoch is invited to go to Malta to set up a house for a wealthy client who purchased a lot of valuable home furnishings. He is a handsome charming man who made his own fortune in architecture. He is found dead inside a piece of furniture shipped from her store. There is an odd man who arrived on the same plane as Lara and she keeps running into him. She calls him the great white hunter or gwh because of how he dresses. She then finds him dead. This turns out to be a plot by a politician who wants to arrange his superior to die.

I would give the book 2½ stars partly because this Kindle edition has a few editing errors that were annoying. However, my biggest complaint was the unnecessary 'talk' of the Goddess at the beginning of each chapter -- I liked it at first but it didn't really have anything to do with the story so I lost interest. Much of the history of Malta contained in those section was also presented in the main story line as well so it didn't even have that purpose.

I also found it extremely distracting in the climax of the mystery for the author to suddenly switch from writing in the past tense to present tense (just for that one chapter).