The Scorpion's Bite

July 26, 2010
Set in 1943, Baron's third mystery featuring archeologist Lily Sampson (after 2006's The Torch of Tangier) will appeal more to romance readers than history buffs. OSS founder Wild Bill Donovan, whom Lily assisted in Torch with the Allied invasion of North Africa, sends her to Palestine, where she hooks up with Gideon Weil, the hunky director of the American School in Jerusalem. As the pair begin an archeological survey of Trans-Jordan, their Bedouin guide vanishes, only to turn up murdered. After the authorities arrest Gideon, Lily must clear Gideon's name—and keep him from being maimed by a primitive ritual designed to identify the guilty. Sampson also gets involved in a plot to attack an oil pipeline supplying the Nazis, but she makes an unconvincing action heroine. The prose is passable at best ("It takes a year, two sometimes, to recover from a loss. Everyone must grieve in their own way").