I was very pleased to be given a copy of this novel by a local author that's been chosen for York's Big City Read 2014 and look forward to discussing it with others.
From what I've read so far, it seems to be quite a page-turner, a double-time mystery/adventure set in both 4th century BC Greece and Italy and in present day Germany, Italy, England, Greece ....

From Fantasticfiction.co.uk: "I have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever...The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy -- an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history. Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But this tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself. And then Lily vanishes. Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life -- or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police and not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back. But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return."

A rattling good yarn by a new-to-me teller of tall tales! If they're all as entertaining as this, then I'd happily read his others ....

Alternately narrated in the first person by Plato (yes, that one - ancient Greek philosopher!) and as a third person account of the dramatic search made by musician Jonah Barnes when his archaeologist wife Lily goes missing from a dig in Southern Italy, both stories take the reader down into the Underworld, where it really isn't a good idea to go!

My thanks to York Libraries for this introduction!

To my non-BookCrossing friend (JR)

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