| Title | : | The Moche Warrior (Lara McClintoch Archeological Mystery, #3) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 336 |
| Publication | : | First published April 1, 1999 |
The Moche Warrior (Lara McClintoch Archeological Mystery, #3) Reviews
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So much goes into creative work, appreciated from vastly differing angles. Some want scenic and character detail. Others groan at doses of education ~ while many devour cultural, historical, and archaeological flavour. We can examine genre, action, narration, language, literary quality. However what causes our reactions to books is inconsistent and the same criteria can’t be the gauge. It has to come down to blatant enjoyment of each story. I loved everything about this novel!
Lyn Hamilton is tremendously adept at conveying everything, which carries through to novel #3, "Moche Warrior", 1999. Lara’s McClintoch’s thoughts, awkwardness between people, the atmosphere of a village, intricate painting on a vase; whatever she lays out is amply perceived. What immediately caught my attention, is an exceptional ability to know what to omit. For instance, I don't think there's a specific picture of Lara and I find that I don't care. She's forty, a strawberry blonde of average height and build and the mind is satisfied with that outline. The purpose of books versus films, is that we should fill in the basics. Lyn Hamilton gets straight to the action and information that matters.
Some readers cite ‘cardboard culprits’ but who needs their psychological backgrounds? Deviations can leave us impatient to return to the plot. Secondary and tertiary characters of this series are drawn with very distinct traits, which is impressive because there are so many of them. As long as action sticks with the protagonist; I absorb any detail that is woven in. I hadn’t heard of the Moche and am inspired to know them. The mysteries are exciting, the dialogue humorous and very natural. I’m fulfilled by the summaries at the end of each book. It’s a blow to Canadians and fans that cancer took Lyn so soon. I treasure her writing. -
Another solid entry in this entertaining series. Lara's store is torched, a man is found dead inside, her friend Alex is under suspicion, and she begins her own investigation into a mysterious artifact from Peru. This sends her on a dangerous quest to a small village in Peru and as the web closes in on her, the suspects multiply. I really like this character and her development in each book. Very good series.
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Not very believable plot. Actually, not even close to believable. But, as it is a work of fiction (technically not in the fantasy realm, but still) I will allow the author to stretch reality a bit. The book would be a lot better if the character were developed a bit more. They're too cliche, too - this seems to be a recurring theme with the author. The main character is still somewhat annoying, but there are are enough interesting bits in the story to keep my attention. I love how the author gives us parts of the legend of the place she chooses for the setting. I'm interested in the subject matter, therefore I will continue with the series.
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I really enjoyed this episode of the series, a series which I am enjoying overall.
In this book I enjoyed the mystery, but I also appreciated learning more about Peru, its people, its history, and its landscape. This book has really ignited in me a wish to visit there.
I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series. -
I read this book in one day. That should tell you all you need to know! However, I will expand a little. The Moche Warrior is Hamilton's third in the Lara McClintoch series and is so far the best in the series. Lara's actions after a break-in, attempted murder and murder at her small business are a little far-fetched. Who runs off to Peru to solve the mystery themselves rather than report everything they know to the police? But that action gets her Peru where the novel really takes off. Besides a satisfying mystery/thriller there is also a lot of information on the Moche (a civilization that existed in Peru prior to the Incas) and about the illegal trade in antiquities.
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I didn't think reading a story about a forty-something antiques dealer would interest me in the least. I'm used to giving in to my guilty pleasure: YA fantasy, and ignoring anything and everything else. But when Lyn Hamilton's "The Moche Warrior" was placed in front of me and I opened to the first page, I found myself pleasantly surprised... and immediately captivated. Hamilton's heroine, Lara McClintoch errs on the side of self-depricating and likes to roll with the punches - which is a good thing, because when we first meet her, she's already bounced back from her fair share of failures. But she's not one to give up so easily. A divorcee with a business that is constantly flirting with bankruptcy, McClintoch finds herself in yet another tough spot by the end of chapter one and it will take her the remainder of the novel to work her way out of it. When some black market antiques accidentally fall into McClintoch's possession, her world as she knows it crumbles before her. On the run to save her reputation, her shop and her life, she decides to travel to Peru to solve the mystery she's been thrown into.
This book had that amazing quality I look for in every book, but seldom find: I couldn't put it down. It was a real page-turner. Not only are the characters intriguing and complex, but the history injected into the story, the surprising plot twists and the playful tone all make it a very worth-while read. My YA-fantasy-loving self was completely satisfied, and still this novel went even further. The history-lover, adventure-seeker and chick-lit-aficionado in me also came away content. If that's not a win, I don't know what is. I highly recommend this book. I only found out after finishing the last page that it's the third novel in a series, so you may want to start with number one: "The Xibalba Murders," which I have yet to read, but can only assume it's just as good. I know I'll be stocking my shelves with some more Lyn Hamilton this summer. You probably should too. -
Book 3 in this fun-to-read series about antique shop owner/designer Lara McClintoch.
Lara's ex-husband Clive Swain is set up in a business directly competing with Lara's right across the street by his new rich wife. As if that isn't annoying enough, when Lara goes to a swanky auction house after a friend dies, Clive outbids her for some expensive glasses she wanted to get for a client who collects them and Clive intends to give them to the man who he wants to lure to his own business. For revenge, Lara snags a box of what looks like junk to her but that Clive and another man she calls Lizard are in a hot battle to get.
Bad things happen because of it. The store is set on fire, her neighbor and employee Alex (who is elderly) is bashed on the head, and the man she called Lizard who wanted the box is found trussed up and dead in the back room. The police want to pin the arson/theft/murder on Alex and maybe Lara too leading Lara to get a friend in Mexico (ex-lover) to set her up with a phony driver's license, passport, and job on a dig in the area where the stolen Moche Warrior piece came from.
In Peru, more danger follows as Lara tries to unravel the mystery and watch out for a young couple staying on a commune nearby. A rollicking good read. -
This is the 3rd book I've read in the Lara McClintoch archeological mystery series and the 3rd book I've read. This story finds Lara rushing off to Peru to try and solve incidents that occurred in Toronto; a fire in her antique shop, an assault on her shop assistant and two murders. I did have some difficulties with the beginning of the book; why would Lara run off and leave her assistant/ friend in the hospital and leave her partner in the lurch without really any word. But once the story got rolling, it was an entertaining read. Maybe a bit far-fetched, but ultimately, a satisfying story. The characters were interesting and the archeological information not to complicated, just enough to make it interesting. I have a few others in this series on my books shelf and will continue to follow Lara around the world.
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This series is better the further I get into it. This historical/archaeological aspect is very interesting and the author does a good job weaving the facts into fiction. Character development is fairly strong even with minor characters. Additionally, Ms. Hamilton does a nice job in her cultural descriptions. This is the third book in the series and it looks as if the author will be taking the reader all over the world investigating past cultures and the things they left behind. Looking forward to the next book.
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This #3 in the series is classified as an archaeological mystery. This one explores the civilization of the Moche who existed prior to the Incas in Peru. The historical information imparted in the story is interesting but doesn't overwhelm the reader. The plot was a little far-fetched in spots; but overall, it was a well written and intriguing read with colorful descriptions. I would like to see this series made into movies.
Laura McClintoch is half owner of an antiques shop called Greenhalgh and McClintoch in Toronto. She is pretty annoyed when she finds her ex-husband, Clive Swain, has opened a competing store across from hers. She attends an auction to buy some pressed glass goblets for a client but her ex outbids her for them. Furious, she outbids him, and another man she nicknames the Lizard, on a box of what looks like junk but contains a small jade snuff bottle which her ex collects. Later, she finds in the box some Moche artifacts. On the bottom of a flared bowl or vase, she finds taped to it a card reading "Replica of a pre-Columbian flared vase. Made in Campina Vieja, Peru. A few days later her shop is broken into, the vase and a silver peanut-shaped bead are stolen, her storage room is set on fire, and she finds the dead body of the man she called Lizard.
The police suspect her friend and employee Alex who was at the store, got hit in the head, and can't remember what happened. If Alex is cleared, then they might go after Laura for arson and insurance fraud. Fearing she will be arrested, and wanting to clear Alex, she decides to flee and investigate further into this mystery. She 1st travels to New York to an antiques shop named Ancient Ways where the owner, Edmund Edwards, should have picked up the box but it was never claimed. That's probably why it ended up at auction. When she finds an old man killed in a hideous way at the shop, she begins to suspect that the artifacts may not have been reproductions but the real deal and smuggled illegally out of Peru. Laura decides to travel to Campina Vieja to find the source of what may be a smuggling operation. She travels to Mexico first to ask help from an ex boyfriend named Lucas May who is now a politician. He provides a new identity under the name of Rebecca MacCrimmon and a letter of introduction to Dr. Stephen Neal, codirector along with Dr. Hilda Schwengen, of an archaeological site in the area where Laura will go undercover to investigate.
In Campina Vieja she finds several more suspects and a possible place where the smuggling might be taking place. It's owned by the mayor Carlos Montero and his brother who make reproductions of artifacts to sell to the tourists. The story gets a little convoluted with plenty of twists and turns and a red herring or two to intrigue the reader. Laura learns more about the Moche warriors and their culture and ceremonies. She also discovers a family of grave robbers who are ruthless and deadly until... The plot was artfully crafted if not always believable. At the beginning of each chapter is a look back into the past at a Moche Warrior burial ceremony. Recommended series. -
When I first heard about this series, I knew I had to read at least one to see if this was worth the time and money to invest in a series that is (at this point in time) 11 books. Fortunately, the local library had this one.
Sorry to say, the main character is blah and in some cases, whiney. She seems more interested in the fact that her ex-husband has set up shop across the street from her. There is an entire build-up of a plot and mystery with the box contents she purchased at auction, the fire, attack of her friend, the dead body...and she jumps off and takes a trip to NYC where another body shows up.
Then off to Mexico to visit an old flame who manages to get her some fake identification and passport (identity theft anyone??) and she's off to Peru to investigate .
Admittedly, for someone who knew little about the Mochi civilization at the beginning of the book (she's an antiquarian not an archeologist by profession), she was able to give quite the historical background of the land, weather effects, determination of the build up of the culture as well as possible reasons for its fall. With bits about plate tectonics and ocean currents thrown in. Then there is the social comments regarding looting of tombs and (wait for it) drug trade as well as the hard life that some areas of Peru force on their inhabitants.
Lots of people flit in and out of the story and seriously, it was hard to keep track of many of them. It didn't help that many were underdeveloped and/or cliched. Admittedly, the mayor and his brother could have easily been the main crooks but Hamilton actually made them generous and honest men.
The story speeds up until everything is revealed. Well, nearly everything. Far too many items are left to the epilogue to be tied up in a couple pages of flashback.
If this is the standard trend of this series, I may try one or two more because the history part of it was captivating as well as interesting. The mystery plot was, basically, . . . muh. -
This is a fine continuation of the Lara McClintoch series. A couple of chapters into it, while enjoying everything, I realized that I'd forgotten how much I like the protagonist. In this one, she's back in Toronto. Her ex-husband opens a store right across the street. Gaaah! After she purchases a box of junk at auction, there's a night-time murder and fire in her own store. That's too close to home, so she sets out to investigate and calls upon an old friend. The investigation takes her pretty far afield, including New York and Peru to follow up on what she thinks is a smuggling operation. Things get pretty dangerous...
First published in 1999 (Berkley edition), there's a bit of the millennium vibe about the book. I really enjoyed the story, and at some point soon I'll move along to the next. I obtained them all on Smashwords when there was a big discount sale, so they're already here, queued up and waiting.
The text appears to be scanned and OCRed from a printed book or manuscript, so there are a few typos related to that process. Other than that, the writing is well polished and so forth. -
I've read a few of the Lara McClintock books. I like this on the least. Lara goes to an auction to buy a few things to help her remember her dead friend. While there she sees a snuff bottle and box that her ex-husband is bidding on. She bids until she wins. The box has some junk in it and some replicas of the Moche civilization in it. The box wound up in the auction because it belonged to a dead man who never picked it up at customs. As Lara tries to find out where the box came from, she leaves a trail of dead men who are murdered by a man she calls the Spider. She asks her friend Rob for help, but he says she should stay out of it and refuses to help. She goes to Peru under an assumed name to work with Steve, an archaeologist digging for Moche antiques. Lara is snooping around trying to find the killers and the missing antiques. She solves all the mysteries and everyone lives happily ever after. The book ends a little too perfectly.
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It was ok. The characters, especially the main one, were flat. To be fair the author tried to make the main character flawed, but her personality becomes nothing but flaws. She makes nothing but unintelligent decisions that weren't thought out and land her in worse and worse situations. Also, she was there for the ride above all else. She did little to influence the outcome of events after the initial decision that led her to Peru in the first place.
That being said, the setting was great. While most authors would have gone the easy route of showcasing the Inca and Machu Pichu, she chose to focus on the northern coast of Peru and the Moche instead. I've lived in Trujillo and the descriptions of the setting, the art, and the people were fairly accurate. It's because of this that I gave it 3 stars rather than 2. -
This was a substantially better novel than the Maltese Goddess that came before it in the Lara McClintoch series. I might even go as far as to say it was a vast improvement, to the extent that whilst I was going to give up on the series I shall continue to see if this level of quality is maintained.
This book had a much better beginning, the pace of the story was much better, it contained actual archeology unlike the prior book and there was some actual mystery there too. All the elements one requires for a book series that bills itself as "an archeological mystery" were present.
Overall, it was quite enjoyable and even contains some educational material about Peruvian pre-Columbian history which was interesting. -
This book was slightly better than the previous two. The mystery was more believable, the threads woven together a bit less clumsily. We learn a bit more about Lara as a person, although she strikes me as much less mature and much more easily distracted than any real 40-something woman with a possible murder charges and/or bankruptcy threatening would be. Story still seems to drag, significantly at times, and then speed ahead all in the last chapter.
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The beginning of this one was convoluted and a little hard to follow. But halfway through, it took a turn for the better. I've been reading these out of order, so this is the first one I came across that actually had archaeology in it. That part was quite enjoyable. And the archaeology was pretty solid.
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A fun read with a good introduction to a culture I knew nothing about, but the characters were shallow and the plot both convoluted and explained away at the end by too many coincidences and mistaken identities.
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I liked it, it is worth the read!
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That was quite the adventure. I was really wondering how anything was going to get solved but eventually it all started to unravel. I like Lara and the Peruvian setting was different and enjoyable.
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Lara McClintoch is not your usual business owner. As an antique dealer, she not only looks for good deals but also those that seem to be just too good to be true. You have to know your stuff but at times you learn that you also have to go with your gut instinct.
But what if your instinct is shaken? For Lara, things go strongly array when her ex-husband opens up a competing antique store in her neighborhood, then shows up at an auction she goes to ... and further, purchases the very item she was seeking ...
Throwing caution to the winds, Lara gets back by purchasing a mystery box. The only thing she knows that is in it is a snuff box that her husband ... and a mysterious man she calls the Lizard ... are both bidding on. And shortly afterwards, there's a fire in her shop and a dead man, and Lara decides its time to hunt for clues about the mystery box and its contents.
A light, easy enjoyable mystery. While a bit far fetched, it is a cozy mystery that keeps the interest going. -
Okay, I think I have given this series a fair trial, but I'm finding it very hard to take the main character seriously or to care about what happens to her. She comes across as a person without normal intelligence and reasoning ability, with more than a dash of petty vengefulness. The stories are about subjects that interest me, but Lara McClintoch as a character is totally off-putting.
McClintoch is half-owner of an antiques shop in Toronto. In addition to being an antiques shop owner, she seems to have a second career as a globe-trotting solver of murder mysteries. Well, doesn't every antiques shop owner?
In The Moche Warrior Lara's nose is severely put out of joint when her ex-husband opens a brand new antique shop just across the street from hers. She's sure that he's doing it just to spite her and she determines that she will have her revenge.
At an auction, when she sees that the ex REALLY wants a particular box, she bids against him and wins the box, even though she has to use her personal credit card to pay for it. She takes the box home, thinking that it is nothing special. It appears to contain reproductions of Moche ceramics, but then someone tries breaking into her shop and part of the contents of the box - a supposedly reproduction Moche vase and a peanut-shaped bead - go missing.
But that is only the beginning. Soon, someone tries to burn down the shop and among the ruins is the body of a man who had been at the auction bidding on some of the same items as Lara. The police suspect Lara and/or her assistant and friend Alex, who was present when the blaze started and who had received a blow to the head which has erased his memory of the events.
Lara belatedly comes to the conclusion that the Moche "reproductions" in her box were actually priceless artifacts from archaeological digs. It is illegal to take such artifacts out of Peru. Has she stumbled into the middle of a art smuggling operation?
Instead of cooperating with the police - even her friend, the Royal Canadian Mountie Rob that we met in the last book - Lara decides to investigate all on her own, because ... of course she does.
Her investigations lead her to New York where she stumbles over another dead body of an antiques dealer. Then she decides she has to go to the source of the mystery and she heads off to Peru, by way of Mexico. She stops in Mexico City to ask for the help of her former lover, a Mexican archaeologist and freedom fighter turned politician. He helps her establish a new identity and sends her to Peru with a letter of introduction to an archaeologist working in the area from which the mysterious artifacts originated.
Arriving in Peru, she is taken on as a part of the archaeological dig team. Soon, there are more dead bodies and more mysteries and Lara is blundering around in the dark looking for clues. It's all very cloak and daggerish. Moreover, it seems that whenever there is a decision to be made, Lara makes the wrong one, and yet somehow, piece by piece, she begins putting together the puzzle and solving the mystery of the Moche artifacts.
The most interesting parts of the book for me were the discussions of Moche culture and some of the aspects of the archaeological dig that rang true. But the character of Lara is just a wet blanket for me. Her case is not helped in the least by the fact that she doesn't understand the proper use of object pronouns. She uses the first person singular pronoun as an object (as in, "She delivered the artifact to Ramon and I.") which just sets my teeth on edge! Why do writers persist in this incorrect usage and why do their editors not correct them?
So, putting aside my dislike of Lara, how shall I rate this book? I do like the story and the archaeological details and the writer's concept for this series, but I find the characters to be such unbelievable cardboard critters that I really think that this will probably serve as the end of my experience in reading the Lara McClintoch Archaeological Mysteries. -
Reviewed by BevEditions Intern, Larissa Benfey:
I didn't think reading a story about a forty-something antiques dealer would interest me in the least. I'm used to giving in to my guilty pleasure: YA fantasy, and ignoring anything and everything else. But when Lyn Hamilton's "The Moche Warrior" was placed in front of me and I opened to the first page, I found myself pleasantly surprised... and immediately captivated. Hamilton's heroine, Lara McClintoch errs on the side of self-depricating and likes to roll with the punches - which is a good thing, because when we first meet her, she's already bounced back from her fair share of failures. But she's not one to give up so easily. A divorcee with a business that is constantly flirting with bankruptcy, McClintoch finds herself in yet another tough spot by the end of chapter one and it will take her the remainder of the novel to work her way out of it. When some black market antiques accidentally fall into McClintoch's possession, her world as she knows it crumbles before her. On the run to save her reputation, her shop and her life, she decides to travel to Peru to solve the mystery she's been thrown into.
This book had that amazing quality I look for in every book, but seldom find: I couldn't put it down. It was a real page-turner. Not only are the characters intriguing and complex, but the history injected into the story, the surprising plot twists and the playful tone all make it a very worth-while read. My YA-fantasy-loving self was completely satisfied, and still this novel went even further. The history-lover, adventure-seeker and chick-lit-aficionado in me also came away content. If that's not a win, I don't know what is. I highly recommend this book. I only found out after finishing the last page that it's the third novel in a series, so you may want to start with number one: "The Xibalba Murders," which I have yet to read, but can only assume it's just as good. I know I'll be stocking my shelves with some more Lyn Hamilton this summer. You probably should too.
*Look for "The Moche Warrior" on BevEditions - coming soon!*
*Find "The Xibalba Murders" on BevEditions now!* -
This book was read for my 2016 Reading Challenge
Around the World in 80 Books
While reading this book, I realized that I’ve been spoiled. I’ve been spoiled by good literature. Sadly, this book is not good literature. I LOVE mystery & crime books. The majority of what I read fall into that genre. I’ve read terrible, average & spectacular crime books. This, however, was not one of them. The Moche Warrior is part of a series featuring Lara McClintoch, an antiquities dealer based in Toronto. Maybe I would have more love for the series if I had started from the beginning with Lara, but I wanted to read this one for my Peru book. To me, most of this story felt too convenient. Lara buys some “junk” at an auction that gets stolen from her a shop and a strange man ends up dead in her shop. Full of questions, Lara decides the ONLY course of action to get to the bottom of it is change her identity and go down to Peru herself and get to the bottom of this illegal artifacts dealing. Conveniently, she finds herself on an archeological dig in the exact area where the stolen artifacts could have come from. I actually didn’t mind her work in Peru and the mystery that unfolded, but I couldn’t get past WHY she was even there! Anyways, it was a quick read that I finished in a few days. Cross another country off my reading travelogue for the year, but I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this author or character again! -
More of a thriller than a mystery, this is an story featuring Lyn Hamilton's intrepid antique dealer Lara McClintock, taking her this time to Peru, in search of people who may be smuggling real Moche artifacts out of the country disguised as fakes.
Some of the book seems a little far-fetched - how many antique dealers do you know who could get themselves a fake passport while in Mexico? - but overall it works well and is an easy read.
The story starts when Lara buys a box of antiques at an auction and discovers them to contain ancient Moche artifacts (Moche were a civilization in Peru before the Inca).
Suddenly people are dying trying to steal them from her; one of her workers is badly injured and becomes a prime suspect, sparking Lara's spontaneous investigative trip to Peru.
Her social life moves on.... as I read these out of sequence, it was interesting to me that this was the first book where her soon-to-be boyfriend, the Mountie Rob, turns up, and where her friend Moira gets together with Lara's ex-husband. maybe I should read them in sequence?
Anyway, it was good, if not deep. And I did learn something of the Moche, about whom I had previously known nothing at all. -
set in Canada & Peru. Antique dealer, Ally gets an ugly shock when her ex-husband opens a business to compete with hers across the street, but worse is yet to come. At an auction they compete for items and when he spitefully outbids her for something one of her best customers would like, she blindly bids on a box that contained something he really wanted, and her world soon unravels. There were other bidders, and they apparently will stop at nothing to get the Moche 'replicas' in that box. Ally's best guy friend, Alex, is attacked in her shop, which is also set on fire, and an unknown murder victim seems tied to these events. The police detective seems determined to set Alex or Ally up for the crimes. Ally's friend isn't on the case this time, or even available, and when Ally's own inquiries put her at scene of yet another murder she flees to Peru in pursuit of the real answers.
Ally's choices in the early stages of the book seemed ridiculous, which kept me from 'getting into' the story until she went to Peru to join the archeology team. -
I can't tell you how disappointed I am by this novel. It had such great potential! I was particularly intrigued by the prologue set in Moche era Peru because I was lucky enough to work on a Moche tomb dig one summer. I'm sorry to say it was all downhill from there. I really want to fall in love with this series since I love archaeology. I suppose I was hoping for a modern-day Amelia Peabody series, with the degree of factual history and detail that Elizabeth Peters, with her degree in Egyptology from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago brought to her books. Now that she has passed and there will be no more Amelia Peabody, I would really like to find a new archaeologist heroine, but this one is definitely not it. The remaining titles in the series sound wonderful, so I'll probably try a few more before I give up entirely on the series. Let's hope this was just a rough early start.
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Toronto antiques dealer Lara McClintock buys a box of reproductions at an auction. One is the mask of a Moche warrior which she believes to be authentic and pre-Columbian, meaning that it’s illegal to take it out of the country. What is it doing in this miscellaneous box? When she discovers the body of another dealer she contacts her friend, RMPC Sergeant Rob Luczko.
She tracks the address on the box to a dealer in New York City who is no longer in the business. Next she decides to go to the Peru area where the mask was probably dug up. Maybe finding out about the mask will help her find out who murdered the dealer she found.
With the help of an old friend in Mexico City she is able to get onto the dig as a working person. Interesting information about the Moche civilization, reproducing antiques and being on a dig. Well done! Berkley Prime Crime 1999
