The Cana Mystery by David Beckett

It's the middle of the night when Ava's phone rings. Ava is an MIT doctoral student with a particular knack for obscure and ancient languages. And she's pretty good at riddles, too. A former flame, Paul Grant is calling. Wants her to hop a plane to meet him in Yemen. Got something that is right up her alley.

Paul is working for the megamillionaire Simon DeMaj on a dig in Yemen. The guy has pull. He can fix it so Ava can enter Yemen right away and not have to wait on visa clearances. Ava is intrigued so she gathers stuff she'd need and heads off for Yemen.

And Paul disappears.

Now she is alone in a country not known for its hospitality towards anything American, especially a woman. But she heads off for Paul's last known location, eventually arriving at a coastal city on the Red Sea looking for transit to Egypt when she figures out that she is being followed by some nasty folks who work for the even nastier Sheik Ahmed.

When she lands in Egypt, she eventually tracks down Paul hiding in a monastery. And inadvertently leading Sheik Ahmed's men. The bad guys confront DeMaj about what relic he is pursuing and shoots him down in the desert.

The chase is on from deep in Egypt to Cairo, Alexandria, Malta and eventually Rome. The relic Paul thinks they've uncovered could be an even more significant find than the Dead Sea Scrolls because of the rumored prophecy it contains.

Paul, and now Ava, believes he has unearthed the wine vases from the biblical city of Cana. That's the city where Jesus turned water in wine at a wedding; his first miracle. Paul is sure that he has a couple of the very vases touched by Jesus. While the vases themselves would be a remarkable discovery, rumor has it that the vases hold the key to a prophecy that could influence politics of the church, the Vatican, and the upcoming election of a new Pope. And some really don't want that prophecy revealed.

I was comparing this to The DaVinci Code after the plotline became apparent. Really fast paced. Minor cliffhangers at the end of each chapter to keep the reader turning the pages. But in DaVinci Code, Robert Langdon was following clue after clue throughout the book. Ava and Paul aren't following clues. They've already found the vases. The pace of this book is in the chase and the people who either help them or try to do harm.

All in all, this was a pretty reasonable story that falls into our airplane book category (aka, 'a beach read'). Interesting characters and a reasonably believable plot crammed into a fast-paced adventure yarn.

East Coast Don