The Last Ember

Jeff Woodman's breathless narration maintains the suspense through each twist of this implausibly byzantine but highly enjoyable adventure. Ex-archaeologist and current antiquities lawyer Jonathan Marcus returns to his first profession during a business trip to Rome. He joins his ex-girlfriend and former classmate in a search for the eight-foot gold menorah that once graced Jerusalem's temple. At every step, they're dogged by a well-connected terrorist who seeks the ritual object's destruction. Woodman is great with the accents of English speakers--English, American, Australian. But other languages, mainly Italian and Arabic, get the same vaguely foreign-sounding inflection. A.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

June 8, 2009
Da Vinci Code
addicts will enjoy Levin's debut, a dense, complicated novel of religious suspense. Jonathan Marcus, classics scholar–turned–lawyer, is sucked back into his former life in archeology after becoming involved in an antiquities theft case his law firm is handling. A few minutes in the presence of a chunk of the ancient Roman Forum and a reunion with an old girlfriend from his student days, Dr. Emili Travia, and Jonathan is ready to cast off his three-piece suit and return to unearthing ancient subterranean mysteries. The prize this time is the 2,000-year-old Tabernacle menorah, eight feet of solid gold stolen from Herod's Temple in Jerusalem and hidden somewhere in Rome. The forces of evil are represented by Sheik Salah ad-Din, who seeks to find and destroy the menorah. The fevered pace slows only to deliver a multitude, perhaps too much of a multitude, of interesting historical factoids.

December 15, 2009
In Levin's (daniellevin.com) intelligent and dynamic debut thriller, classics scholar-turned-lawyer Jonathan Marcus is drawn into a search for the legendary Tabernacle Menorah via his firm's representation of an unscrupulous antiquities dealer. The set for this highbrow "Indiana Jones"-style adventure, whose pace is slowed only by the multitude of fascinating factoids, includes the Holy Land's most volatile shrine and Rome's Colosseum. Jeff Woodman voices Italian, Jewish, and Arab characters with ease, though his rendering of Emili Travia, Marcus's romantic interest, lacks consistency and authenticity. Recommended despite this quibble.Sandy Glover, Camas P.L., WA

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