I'll just say it straight out. I didn't like this book very much. I did finish it, which is more than I can say for some others I've read that I didn't like. I didn't set out to not like it, but there it is. Now, I happen to have read many reviews in which readers say it's a great book, and if they say so, then that's okay. However, I'm often at odds with many regular book readers as far as liking/not liking a book, and it doesn't bother me at all. I'll tell you why this one didn't particularly strike my fancy after my brief summary of this book.Deborah Miller is a curator of the Druid Hill Museum in Atlanta, started by her mentor, Richard Dixon. One night, after a fundraiser, Deborah goes home but receives a strange, anonymous phone call that sends her back to the museum, only to find Richard dead. Deborah, of course, calls the police, but does some sleuthing of her own, and finds only a brief clue: Richard has written down the word "Atreus," probably his last act. From there, we have the following: a cop that may not actually be a cop, Richard's visit to a website that reveals he was interested in a golden death mask (possibly of a king of Mycenaea, maybe even Agamemnon), an attack on a dark highway, all of which send Deborah running to Greece to try to find answers. But it gets sort of murky and muddled from there, as the plot takes an abrupt turn, and Deborah finds herself in even more danger than before. My whole problem is that there's so little substance to this book that it was hard to find any of it the least bit believable and thus the least bit engaging. Then there's the villain, whose dialogue was so campy that I could only laugh rather than be terrified at the "horrific" plot at the root of it all. Don't get me wrong...I do a lot of escape reading where there's way too many coincidences, too many timely deus ex machinas and pretty bad dialogue, but in this one, the evil and nefarious deed was just was a wee bit silly. I don't think I'd recommend this one to a friend; let's put it that way.
Deborah Miller enjoys her job as curator of a private museum in Atlanta—until she finds her boss murdered and the centerpiece of his hitherto secret, private collection missing. When she discovers that the police officer investigating the murder isn’t who he seems to be, and then she becomes a target herself, she sets out to determine what exactly was stolen, and why. It apparently is a relic of great value, though “value” is a relative term, and the relic represents something drastically different to everyone she encounters. From Atlanta to Greece to Russia, she pursues the puzzle of the Atreus mask, and you’ll have a ball following her trail.
What do You think about The Mask Of Atreus (2006)?
The mystery begins with the death of a museum proprietor and the theft of a Mycenaean death mask. Deborah Miller, museum curator, searches for the answers to the death of her mentor and the reasoning behind the theft. Deborah's persistent search leads her to Greece and eventually to Russian in hopes of answers. What she finds is beyond the believable. The path to the truth bind the journey to solve the mystery, and the characters involved, into an amazing ending. The ending was worth the reading.
—Deborah
Entertaining thriller story, with its basis in Schliemann's archaeological excavation of Troy (and what became of the artifacts). As is probably obvious from the cover art, there is a Third Reich/Neo-Nazi tie-in as well.Hartley builds an interesting cadre of characters who are very real in their foibles. As someone who has studied archaeology and volunteered in a museum, I can tell you that the sections about provenance, dating and the like are spot-on.This book kept my interest in a "beach read" sort of way. Those who like fast-paced historical fiction with an archaeological bent will be drawn into this tale.
—Sharon
I quite enjoyed this, but it wasn't spectacular. A man is murdered in a private museum, in a secret room which no one knew was there, and he is surrounded by Mycenaean relics. Something large has been stolen, and Deborah, curator and friend of the murdered man, is determined to try and find out what has happened. Her only clue is the work Atreus written on a notepad.The story moves from America to Greece, to Moscow and then back to America. There are murderous attempts on Deborah's life, and behind everything is the mysterious Atreus. So far, so good, I thought - except there didn't seem to be any consistency to her behaviour. She didn't want to trust the police, because one of them wasn't a policeman and she didn't know him...yet she was perfectly willing to trust a lawyer who she didn't know, and who didn't know the murdered man, but who had apparently been working with him in the weeks before he died. There was quite a dramatic lead up to the climax, and there was an interesting twist towards the end, but I found myself with an overall air of dissatisfaction at the end.
—Sharon Kennedy
