The Smoke Hunter

Romance readers will best appreciate Benson’s first novel, an adventure thriller set in 1898. Archivist Ellie Mallory loses her job at London’s Public Records Office after she’s arrested for her suffragette activities. Before Ellie leaves her office, she pockets a hollowed-out psalter that contains a medallion bearing the image of a grinning idol as well as a map purporting to provide the location of El Dorado. Her appropriation of the psalter sets two villains on her trail. Her pursuers follow Ellie to Belize City, where she’s rescued by the rakish Adam Bates, with whom she teams to search for the map’s secrets. Hitherto an independent heroine, she now becomes a damsel in distress. Amid perils straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, Ellie can’t help noticing Adam’s physical attributes (“The hard, wet planes of his body were only a breath away from her own, radiating heat and solid, barely concealed strength”). [em]Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard Morhaim Literary. (Sept.) [/em]