The Babylon Contingency: Archaeology at its most dangerous

by Clifford Longley

Investigating a burglary at an English country house, DI Robbie Peele comes face to face with some of the most mysterious objects in world archaeology, disks similar to the Phaestos Disk - and with a Middle Eastern terrorist cell determined to steal them. Why - and why are Mossad involved?. The vital clue is a long abandoned Muslim village in Crete, where terrible things happened more than a century ago, witnessed by a Victorian gentleman explorer who recorded what he saw in coded diaries. Seeking the truth about the strange disks, Peele and his assistant, Sarah Shipton, head to Crete. But Crete poses as many puzzles as it solves. In the end Peele has to ask far harder questions than simply who did the original burglary - the answer to which infuriates him. What do the disks really say, in what language, and who made them? And why is the answer so dangerous to peace in the Middle East?

• ISBN10: 1782641203
• ISBN13: 9781782641209
• Publish Date: 17 October 2014
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 10 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Lion Hudson Ltd
• Imprint: Lion Fiction
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Lianne]

I received a copy of this novel through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers programme in exchange for an honest review. This review in its entirety was originally posted at eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2015/01/28/review-the-babylon-contingency/

The premise of the novel was as interesting as the blurb says. Many of these types of adventure-thriller novels feature items from similar cultures or themes; there’s only been a few to date that explored items not as ommediately well-known. The Phaestos Disk is a unique archaeological artefact and the story around it draws from Minoan and Greek history and culture as well as on more recent Greek history and exploration ventures.

Despite of the intriguing premise though, the story really dragged. There was a lot more show than tell–explanations, procedures–that it just drags the pace of te story down immensely. I think the storytelling would’ve been smoother had it been written in third person rather than in first person (Peele’s perspective) because a lot of his comments felt unnecessary for my understanding of the story. Sadly the characters were not terribly interesting either; their interactions were not stilted per se but they weren’t captivating either. It was refreshing to see a non-ex-military guy led an investigation such as this, and his name was pretty amusing, but his initial attitude and behaviour towards Sarah was really weird.

I managed to finish reading this novel but sadly it just wasn’t as thrilling as I expected it to be. The only element saving this book from a lower rating was the premise and the object surrounding the overall plot.