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LAND OF BURNING HEAT
by Judith Van Gieson
Signet, February 2003
260 pages
$5.99
ISBN: 0451208005


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Imagine for a moment that your job, which you enjoy a great deal, is that of an archivist in the Southwest. A woman brings you a copy of a document which she found buried under the bricks which are the floor of her house. This document, if authentic, would be worth a lot to the right people . . . collectors, libraries, research facilities. You tell her to safeguard the document, and you will check it out for her. You make some telephone calls, and your curiousity (which is already high) grows. You go to this woman's house, where you find that she has been murdered during the course of a run-of-the-mill burglary. There is no trace of the document. What would you do?

Claire Reynier of the University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research goes to the police. She tells them about the document that Isabel Santos brought to her, and where it was found. The police, in the process of checking out her story, uncover another body. This is not a recent corpse, but the skeleton of a young man who died around the same time as the document was written. Is it the body of Joaquin Rodriguez, a Jewish mystic killed by the Inquisition in Mexico City in the late 1500's? Is it an ancestor of Isabel Santos?

Claire does not believe the "burglary" scenario. She continues to research Joaquin Rodriguez, the fate of Jews during the Inquisition in the Southwest, as well as the many possibilities for the source of the missing document. As one might expect, the police are not delighted to have her asking lots of questions. Neither is Manuel Santos, one of Isabel's brothers, who is running for office. Manuel is particularly unexcited to find that the skeleton under the floor may be another Manuel Santos, an Inquisitor in Mexico City. He does not want either his brother Chuy or Grandma Tey to provide samples for DNA testing, testing that would tell if the skeleton was an ancestor of the Santos'.

Claire also talks to people not directly connected to the Santos family. She wants to know what the probability is that the document was written by Joaquin Rodriguez. Conventional wisdom has it that Joaquin renounced his heresy (being a Jew) at the last minute, and was therefore garroted before being burned at the stake. The document would seem to contradict that version of events. Peter Beck is the scholar of record for this particular bit of history. One is not surprised to find that he refuses to even consider the possibility that the document is real.

Warren Isles is a collector in Sante Fe, a voracious and omniverous collecter. He doesn't really care too much who wrote the document - he just wants it. And he'll pay top dollar for it. It would be nice to know who wrote it, but he'd be happy to find out after it was in his collection. He is not a pleasant person, but mostly in a "I have money, so other people aren't as important as I am" kind of way.

There is the obligatory threat of physical harm to Claire, from which she emerges basically unscathed but even more determined to find out what's going on. There is lots of history in this book, but I never felt force-fed or bored by it. If the reader pays attention, it is possible to unravel all the plot twists just a little ahead of Claire, but not so far in advance that the book is ruined.

I enjoyed this book. I had high expectations, having long been a fan of the Neil Hamil series; I was not disappointed. I only wish I'd started at the beginning of the series, with The Stolen Blue.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, May 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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