"A mystery thriller that will grab you and keep you turning the pages!"

Colonel Greg McKenzie and his wife are on a trip to the Holy Land, now that the Colonel is retired from the Air Force where he was an investigator; they are going all the places they never got to go. The Colonel is on edge, he just stopped smoking, and his language is colorful, due in part to the nerves that are on edge from nicotine withdrawal and the never-ending heat.

A young student of archaeology goes out one morning by himself and discovers a cave with a jar in it. When he opens the ancient jar, he finds a scroll. He knows this is an important find and he should turn it over to the head of the expedition he is with. Instead he decides to smuggle it to Palestine. There he will have a friend translate it and then he will present it to the world as his great discovery. Everything goes smoothly until the border, there his friend meets him and when he gets into the car, he promptly removes his shirt to retrieve the scroll, which he has secured to his body. What he doesn't know is that a guard sees him disrobing and becomes suspicious. The guard reports this, along with the car's plate number and description of both driver and smuggler.

This starts a chain of events that lead to the Colonel and his wife unknowingly smuggling the scroll out of the Middle East. When the Palestinians discover this, they kidnap Mrs. McKenzie and hold her for ransom of the scroll.

All of the Colonel's expertise will be needed to find and free his wife, while keeping the scroll safe.

This is a fast exciting read. It grabs you and won't let go, I couldn't put it down. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Reviewed by Judith Saul
Posted December 7, 2002

Summary

Greg and Jill McKenzie's pilgrimage to the Holy Land propels them into an unholy nightmare when they bring home a souvenir that turns out to be a priceless document wanted by militant groups of both Palestinians and Israelis. Caught in the deadly crossfire of Mideast rivalry, the couple finds their home in Nashville no haven from villains who will stop at nothing to get what they're after.

A retired Air Force criminal investigator, Greg must reach deep into his bag of tricks in an attempt to thwart first one group and then the other as his wife's life hangs in the balance. Throughout his sometimes turbulent career, Greg never minced words or hesitated to trample any toes that got in his way. Now his efforts to save Jill are complicated by a lingering hostility toward him among members of the Metro Nashville Police Department that force him to go it alone. The threats and harassment resulted from criticism of a Murder Squad detective that got blown out of proportion and cost Greg his job as an investigator for the district attorney.

The trail switches back and forth across Nashville as Greg and a former Air Force Office of Special Investigations colleague use their skills in the attempt to track down the bad guys. Then the plot takes an unexpected twist as one group appears eliminated and the other makes a diabolical move.

With the clock winding down, Greg finds himself back in Israel with the ancient parchment scroll and its potentially calamitous secret. He is forced to play a high stakes game of cat and mouse with a former Mossad agent who has a reputation for being both demonic and lethal.