Quest for the Crystal Skull

A Virginia Davies Mystery

Texas. It’s the biggest state in the continental United States. Sun worshipers, college students at Spring Break, smugglers and hurricanes visit its coastline. This hurricane found Virginia Davies at a beachfront resort on St. John’s Island securing archaeological artifacts and treasures worth millions that had been hijacked. With the hurricane raging around her, she and a long time friend, Donna Boletti, encounter Virginia’s murdered partner, and some killers trying to steal an old crystal skull.

After she and Donna eliminate the threat of the killers and the hurricane ebbs, they head for New Orleans to track down the people behind the murders. Virginia and Donna are pulled into the world of Voodoo and find other groups wanting the crystal skull and her dead. She and Donna keep searching for clues while the body count keeps going up around them. She learns the people behind the murders are headquartered in Rome.

In Rome she manages to get inside the world of a dangerous art and fake antiques business and an unusual laboratory for the manufacture of undetectable fake art and antiques that could mean her death.

Virginia entangles the reader in a rapid-fire adventure involving the worlds of murder, voodoo, and antique fraud and the sights and sounds of Texas, New Orleans and Rome up to the high stakes end on the Mediterranean Sea.

With Virginia Davies, there is no down time. She and her girlfriend take on some determined bad guys in a fast passed trip to exotic locations. Her and her friend’s determination and sexy behavior get them both into trouble and out of it. The crystal skull is the focal point and they want it back from the goons who stole it. The climax is spine tingling and there are some R-rated parts that are sexy and funny at the same time. I pity any crook that crosses Virginia’s path.

— Marc Jarvis