The murder of a university dean, Joyce Fulbright, a renowned archaeologist and expert on prehistoric cave paintings, reveals webs of sexual blackmail, academic treachery, and archaeological fraud surrounding the most famous cave art in France. Accused of her murder, her lover, the chair of the Anthropology Department, hires PI Harry Przewalski to clear him.
Przewalski excavates the deadly archaeological layers of the case, finding lives torn by deceit, vendetta and redemption. As dean, Fulbright's ruthless academic politics brought power and deadly enemies. As an archaeologist, she and her academic adversaries are engaged in a bitter fight over the sudden appearance of magnificent cave art across southern France and Spain 32,000 years ago. Who ochred the luminous paintings of bison, deer, mammoths, and horses? And why? Her studies threatened to embarrass French cultural heritage and ruin professional careers--the art in one of the most famous caves was likely forged in the 1950s to attract tourists. Equally explosive is a bold theory that the cave artists were not hunters or shamans, but outcasts who retreated into the deepest recesses of the caves, driven by their precocious talent and psychological isolation.
Przewalski meets Ruby, a former student of Fulbright's and victim of academic prejudice, who abandoned archaeology, literary studies and an abusive marriage. They are attracted to one another, both casualties of disillusion. They discover that Fulbright has been living a double life, desperate to keep her past coffined and buried. Her murder is a diabolical act of revenge for a horrific atrocity committed during World War II in Nazi-occupied France.
The second installment in the Harry Przewalski series. The first book in the series is The Bone Field.
