Bangkok Post : Mythology thriller

BOOK Reviews

The Lost Labyrinth By Will Adams, 536 pp 2009 Harper paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading stores, 350 baht

For centuries after the Renaissance, any school worthy of its name taught Greek and Latin. Ancient Athens and Rome were as familiar to students as their own countries. Then, as new curriculums were introduced, many subjects became burdensome to the students, and they were dropped, depriving us of their mythology.

Many are well versed in internet technology and rocket science, but know next to nothing about Zeus and the River Styx. It is left to poets and film makers to bring them to mind. Novelists, too, fashion stories around one or another.

Brit Will Adams harkens back to circa 1,000 BC in his writings. Not surprisingly, he throws the search for Atlantis into his plots. Why not? Every third author does. As nobody knows where it was, or even whether it existed, the scriveners give vent to their imagination where it might have been. Books I've reviewed place Atlantis as far afield as the Atlantic Ocean, Antarctica, and the Caribbean.

In The Lost Labyrinth, Adams opts for the Mediterranean. The format is familiar (e.g. Raiders of the Lost Ark). Good and bad archaeologists are searching for it. Actually, they are looking for two things: the Golden Fleece and Atlantis, where the Fleece is thought to be. Daniel Knox and his girlfriend Gaille Bonnard are the heroes, Mikhail Nergadze is the villain. He hails from the Republic of Georgia, the scion of a Mafia family.

The author has no time for the Greek police, given to pounding suspects to the ground with their clubs. Bodies of other archaeologists pile up (Mikhail's doing) - a schoolgirl, too, because he likes them young. Fearing that Knox is a step ahead of him, he kidnaps and water- boards him to learn what he knows.

Whenever a cave or cavern or abandoned mine is introduced into a tale, you know it'll be milked for 200 pages before the characters visit all its passageways and manage to escape its requisite collapse. This book is no exception. Will Mikhail catch up to Knox and Gaille? Victims die in hospitals, hotel rooms, in undersea battles.

Clive Cussler appears to be Adams' role-model. Knox isn't as powerful as Dirk Pitt, but when his adrenaline is up, he performs in much the same way.

Critics compare the author to Dan Brown. However, The Lost Labyrinth bears no resemblance to The Da Vinci Code. It's a fast-paced thriller that reminds readers there was vibrant life in Europe before the onset of the Judaeo-Christian era.

The title page has the standard disclaimer that this is a work of fiction. Yet the reader can't help wondering: Isn't any of it true? 536 pages are a lot to wade through if we have nothing to show for it. Oh well...