Tears of the Jaguar
Written by A.J. Hartley
Narrated by Tanya Eby
4/5
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About this audiobook
Six months ago, museum curator Deborah Miller had never heard of Ek Balam, an obscure Mayan archaeological site known for its carved figures. Now here she is, having traded Atlanta’s urban jungle for a remote village in Mexico’s Yucatan, tasked with overseeing Ek Balam’s excavation. But when a sudden rainstorm causes a partial collapse at the site, an unexpected treasure is unearthed: a collection of rough-cut rubies hidden from the world for hundreds of years—and very out-of-place in the Yucatan. It is a find of immeasurable value, one that Deborah vows to protect—and yet is powerless to prevent from being stolen soon after its discovery. Determined to retrieve the stones, she sets out to trace their complex history across four centuries and two continents, from Mexico to northern England where the jewels once played a harrowing role in the Lancashire witch trials of 1612. But Deborah is not the only one searching for the stones; close on her heels are archaeologists, occultists, and one very determined arms dealer, all of whom will stop at nothing, not even murder, to claim the prize for themselves.
A.J. Hartley
A. J. Hartley is a native of Lancashire, England, and was born near the town where the witch trials featured in Tears of the Jaguar occurred four hundred years ago. He lived in Japan for several years and traveled extensively throughout southern and eastern Asia before moving to the United States for graduate school. After earning his Ph.D. from Boston University, he taught college-level Shakespeare in Georgia and North Carolina. Today he works as a dramaturg, director, theater historian, and theorist in Renaissance drama at UNC-Charlotte, where he holds the Robinson Chair of Shakespeare Studies. He has written fiction for twenty years and is the author of Macbeth, a Novel with David Hewson, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact, Act of Will, Will Power, The Mask of Atreus, On the Fifth Day, and What Time Devours.
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Reviews for Tears of the Jaguar
17 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5TEARS OF THE JAGUAR was a thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat and rapidly turning the pages to find out what was happening. And this was NOT a story where I saw the solution before the main character.I didn't like Deborah Miller very much when the book began. This museum curator who was sent to the Yucatan to oversee explorations at Ek Balam by her benefactor at Cornerstone who was funding her museum felt out of her depth and resentful of the archaeologist sent to survey the site. Her resentment and jealousy made her sharp tongued and not very likable. She has a bad relationship with her sister and mother because she felt her mother favored her sister and she resented her sister's athletic ability and the times she had to tag along to practices instead of being left alone to study. She was her father's daughter but now he is dead and her mother has remarried and is getting ready to sell the family home. This is another cause for her tension and resentment. The archaeologist - Bowerdale - isn't likable either. He is a pompous, blow hard who likes hitting on his female graduate assistants and doesn't pass up any opportunity to belittle Deborah. The graduate assistants are also shifty characters with Alice being sort of goth and liking to use her sexuality to get things from men. She prefers the abusive kind. James, the other graduate student, is sort of a puppy. He wants Alice's attention and is a sneaky sort of person. When a very heavy thunderstorm uncovers a previously hidden tomb, things change. All of a sudden Deborah needs to coordinate more archaeologists - all of whom are quirky, obsessed and more than a little weird. When the grave goods are stolen, it ignites a chase across Mexico and even to Lancashire England and brings in the CIA, MI5, a Serbian "entrepreneur" who wants to find the treasure to sell to the highest bidder, and someone who doesn't hesitate to leave a trail of bodies behind them.Once Deborah was on the hunt and following clues I began to like her better. I came to appreciate her intelligence and her bulldog-like persistence as she followed the trail of clues. I liked her enough to hunt down and buy two earlier books by the author that included Deborah Miller. This was a very compelling thriller that was a great story. I recommend it to thriller lovers.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5"Tears of the Jaguar" is a decent archaeological thriller. It suffers from what many similar novels face: too much circling around multi-threaded plot points to give any of the sub-plots, and more importantly any of the characters, real depth and development. I enjoyed the core mystery that starts at an archaeological dig in the Yucatan, swings across the pond to England, before heading back to Mexico. Archaeologists discover a previously hidden chamber beneath a reconstructed pyramid at Ek Balam (a real site that's not far from Chichen Itza). Certain objects are discovered and then stolen...and off goes our plot to uncover who took the items, why, and what the items actually are.In the early chapters, author A.J. Hartley shows flashes of real character insight, but too quickly does he turn to cliche and jaded story elements. The characters that are jerks, start off jerky and end jerky. The conflicted protagonist starts off kind of confused and wishy-washy and doesn't progress much throughout the story. The distinct components that give a character life are all there. It's just that there's no subtly in their introduction, and no real growth or change in the qualities by the end of the book. Hartley does return a few times to themes tied to cultural heritage. Laws protect archaeological discoveries on behalf of the country in which they are found, not the finder. But what does a poor rural Maya care whether a find is protected for his country... especially when an object can be sold for many times ones annual wage. Likewise, Hartley touches on cultural bias as one Hispanic Mexican opines on his own bigoted perspective of the Maya Mexicans who live near the dig at Ek Balam. Hartley's writing is smooth and his plot moves quickly which makes the novel, at just over 400 pages, a fast read. He interconnects the discrete plot threads well, jumping seamlessly from character to character and creating suspense and that feeling of 'I’ll read just one more chapter before I go to bed'.This is a terrific 'beach' read (or, um, 'hayride' read since the Summer will be over by the time the book is released).I received this book through the Amazon Vine program.