Margot Arnold

 I've always enjoyed Margot Arnold's mysteries.  Her detectives, anthropologist Dr. Penelope Athena (Penny) Spring and archeologist Sir Tobias Glendower, make an engaging if somewhat ill-assorted pair.  The settings and characters are good, the archeological details accurate so far as I can tell and the plots are well written and comprehensible.  

Unfortunately, I only have three of her books, although I know I've read more of them in the past.  The earliest one I have is The Cape Cod Caper, published in 1980.  Penny responds to an urgent request for help from an old friend, only to find him knocked unconscious and comatose.  The discovery of a body in a cranberry bog eventually leads her and Toby from a mansion on Cape Cod to a remote village in Italy, unraveling the convoluted past of a complicated family.  Grade: A.  

Zadok's Treasure sends the pair on the trail of an old friend of Toby's, an archeologist who has disappeared while hunting for a legendary treasure among the caves around the Dead Sea.  Toby dodges Bedouin tribesmen, suspicious Israeli police and suspected PLO militants in the search for his friend, while Penny tries to decipher the friend's wife increasingly suspicious activities in Jerusalem.  Grade:  A. 

In Death of a Dorset Druid, Toby responds to an urgent plea from a former student, now the curator of a small museum in Dorset, whose plans for an archeological dig have apparently fallen afoul of both local practitioners of ancient witchcraft and modern self-styled Druids.  Grade:  A.

Other books in the series include:

Exit Actors, Dying-- 1979

Death on the Dragon's Tongue

Death of a Voodoo Doll

Lament for a Lady Laird

The Menehune Murders

Toby's Folly

The Catacomb Conspiracy

The Cape Cod Conundrum

The Midas Murders

Sigh, I may have to acquire a few more of these....but the year is already one quarter gone and I haven't even  made it through the authors whose names start with A yet.