The Age of Treachery: A Duncan Forrester Mystery

In 1946, archeology research fellow Duncan Forrester, the hero of Hollywood screenwriter Scott’s overstuffed fiction debut, wants to return to the Greek island of Crete to retrieve a wartime discovery of “his own personal Rosetta stone.” Meanwhile, David Lyall, Forrester’s Oxford University colleague, is murdered on a wintry night, and Forrester’s best friend, Gordon Clark, is accused of the crime. Clark has a motive, since his wife was having an affair with Lyall. Forrester assumes the amateur sleuth mantle to clear his friend’s name. In addition to the murder and an Indiana Jones–like plot involving the historically important Cretan stone, there’s the discovery of an Old Norse manuscript with Nazi implications and an unbreakable code. Real-life characters, including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Ian Fleming, and even a young Margaret Roberts (future Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher), lend verisimilitude, but workmanlike prose may leave some readers less than keen on Forrester’s future adventures. (Apr.)