The Orpheus Descent

Starred review from March 31, 2014
This thought-provoking thriller marks a return to form for the talented Harper (The Mosaic of Shadows) after a string of lackluster efforts. In 389 B.C.E., a young Plato, who has left Athens following the forced suicide of his mentor, Socrates, seeks Agathon, the most brilliant of Socrates’s students, who claims to have found a valuable book of Pythagorean wisdom and has wondrous discoveries to share. Plato’s quest for someone who, bafflingly, keeps staying one step ahead of him, parallels Jonah Barnes’s present-day search for his archeologist wife, Lily, who vanished from the dig she was working on in Sibari, Italy, after finding a gold tablet. When Jonah finds messages, apparently from Lily, indicating that she wants to be left alone, everyone is ready to write off his concerns, but the absence of direct communication keeps Jonah suspicious. Along the way to a resolution of both suspenseful plotlines, Harper explores the fitness of philosophers as rulers, besides presenting a convincing portrait of Plato’s time.

May 1, 2014
Archaeologist Lily Barnes might not fully appreciate how important a newly discovered golden tabletmore of a wafer-thin gold foil, with ancient writing on itis to some people. Soon after she begins her examination of the millennia-old artifact, she disappears. Her husband, Jonah, a guitarist in a rock band, receives text messages that are ostensibly from Lily, but they don't make much sense. Soon Jonah comes to realize his wife is in grave danger; but can he find her before she's lost forever? This exciting, fast-paced thriller boasts some well-drawn characters, an involving plot, and some seriously interesting speculation about the nature of hell. Interspersed with Jonah's story is a first-person narrative recounting the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's own quest for the truth about hell; as the book nears its conclusion, the two stories, Jonah's and Plato's, seem to come together, with the long-ago past and the present appearing to be the same. It's an ambitious booknot many novelists would send a rock star on a journey to helland fans of the author's previous, history-based thrillers (The Lost Temple, 2008) will have a great time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)