The Crystal Skull Published: 1st January 2008 Published by Transworld isbn: 978-0-593-05570-0 Buy this book from Amazon

Web site reviews:

Fresh Fiction http://freshfiction.com/review.php?id=20444

Wow! Does one word count as an adequate review? From the first page, the action never stops in this adventure. Terrific characterization, an intriguing plot and best of all, flashbacks to Cedric Owen's life and adventures. As a writer, I think it's challenging to make those flashbacks without losing the flow of the story. Ms. Scott does it well. If you're not reading her, you're missing a marvelous storyteller.

News Paper Reviews:

EURO CRIME
Manda Scott is an accomplished crime writer, and author of a wonderful series of historical novels. This latest book combines elements of both into one cracking storyline.

It opens with Stella Cody, experienced caver and her academic historian husband Kit searching a Yorkshire cave system for an ancient artefact, hidden there centuries before by Cedric Owen, a 16th Century benefactor of Kit's college. They have worked out the location of the crystal skull from a series of poems written by Owen. The skull is a remarkable sapphire cut into the shape of a human skull and it holds a great power over those who hold it, or even see it. Stella and Kit find the skull, but they are not the only people looking for it and Kit gets hurt as they try and escape from the caves.

Interlaced with the modern day plot line is that of Cedric Owen, the man who hid the skull, knowing it needed to be kept safe from the wrong hands. The skull had been passed down through his family for generations and he must continue to keep it guarded from those who would misuse it. He has several tasks he must perform to keep the skull, with its incredible powers, safe.

The skull is apparently one of thirteen skulls, recorded in Mayan prophecy. It is told that the end of the world will happen on 12th December 2012 and only if all thirteen of the skulls are in their appointed places in the world can this cataclysm be averted. The Mayan legends speak of a multi-coloured serpent which will be summoned by the skulls. Kit and Stella have to decipher Cedric Owen's notes and calculate the right place and time to place the skull.

But there are others who want to possess it and some who would destroy it. They need to figure out who they can trust and who is trying to kill them and seize the skull.

Now, I'm a sceptic of the first order and I have great trouble believing in the power of ancient Mayan prophecies and legends, but Manda is such a fine writer that she sweeps you along and keeps you believing that all this could be possible. She keeps the dual strands of the narrative moving along at a great pace, all the time making the various twists and turns totally believable.

This is what I was longing for all last year - a cracking story, with believable characters, a complicated plot, convincing historical details and a bit of mysticism thrown in for good measure. I know it's only the beginning of the new year but this is already one of my contenders for "read of the year". It's a seriously good thriller by a top class writer. It could just be the breakthrough she so richly deserves.

Pat Austin, England January 2008|

THE HERALD (Formerly The Glasgow Herald) 12/1/08
Readers of Manda Scott’s fiction fall into three principal categories;there are those who enjoyed her original take on crime (her first book, the Orange prize shortlisted Hen’s Teeth, the other 2 Kellen Stewart novels, or the later stand-alone thriller No Good Deed) but who balked at following her, in the four Boudica novels, through the ancient landscapes of 1st Century Britain; those who loved the historical fiction but who’ve never have been tempted by the earlier, contemporary works; and the third category, a growing host of readers happy to follow her into any fictional nook or cranny she cares to explore. The latter group’s loyalty is probably down to the fact that, whatever the genre, Scott writes with style and conviction.

With her 9th novel, The Crystal Skull, she delivers a genre-hybrid. The book’s central conceits - a Mayan end-of-the-world prophecy, a hidden treasure, supernatural communication, and a time-slip format - strays into territory usually staked by purveyors of Airport Hokum, but hold that curled lip. This story has the considerable bonus of being well-written. Sentence by sentence, Scott’s words always work, her sentences swing with complex rhythms. She has an innate sense of drama and, like Dorothy Dunnet and Rosemary Sutcliffe in their own varied oeuvres, she combines the ability to create flawed but complex central characters, and to let us see them as it were sideways, through the eyes of their friends, family, lovers, enemies. All three build on solid foundations of research, and all three know how to transport their readers skilfully into times past with a kind of poetic voice, fitting to eras when heroic acts were not only permissible but necessary.

The novel’s two sets of characters - one in the present, one in the Elizabethan era - are connected via a life-sized blue crystal skull. In 2007, after some painstaking archaeological research and even more painstaking potholing under the Yorkshire fells, the precious skull is located by newly married academics Stella and her husband Kit. They’ve deciphered clues in a ledger bequeathed to a Cambridge University college by one Cedric Owen, a physician living - when first we meet him - in Paris, in the year 1556. Owen’s custodianship of the skull at that time leads him, by way of prophecies, to the New World, and to an encounter with an exotic shaman of the ‘Southern Mayalands’, who teaches him to dream. The resulting visions show him how his crystal skull connects to others around the globe, and how they could be used together, at a time of specific threat, to save the world from desolation. In the closing parts of both narrative strands, the connections between the Skull-keepers becomes apparent, as each fights to keep it safe from their enemies.

It really doesn’t matter if you give credence to the mystical ‘end of days’ storyline, any more than it mattered whether, in the work of Dan Brown, you believed that Leonardo Da Vinci knew the secret of the Holy Grail; Scott imbues her story with sufficiently pulse-raising incident and romantic detail that you’re caught in her blue-sapphire laser-beam, unable to resist turning the pages.

Incidentally, a Mayan prophecy suggests that man will ‘bring about the end of the world on 21st December 2012’ (the author’s note explains sources for further info on this important event on your calendar) so rather than sit about watching the Olympic Games, you might be better to start carving your own skull (Disclaimer: carving of your actual skull not medically advised). Failing that, more skull hokum, but of Hollywood provenance, is due later this year with the fourth in the Indiana Jones franchise. You have been warned.


Guardian Review 22/12/07
If the Mayan prophecy central to this accomplished thriller is to be believed, there will be one colossal bang on December 12 2012, the date predicted for the end of the world. However, ancient wisdom has also provided the means of preventing the apocalypse: a beautiful sapphire carved into the perfect likeness of a human skull. Discovered by Stella Cody and her husband Kit in a cave where it has lain hidden for four centuries, the skull has the power to save the world, as long as they can crack the codes that reveal its intended resting place. Scott handles this heady material with dexterity - the research is thorough, but it never allowed to act as a drag on the pace - and the time-split narrative moves effortlessly from the 1550s to the present and back again. With a talent for combining physical and emotional action, and superb descriptions of the natural world, Scott writes with an intensity that makes this book a nail-biting tour de force. Laura Wilson


The Independent "A cracking mystery that uses its head"
Reviewed by Jane Jakeman
Published: 04 January 2008

Tiny in person, Manda Scott deserves some sort of authorial heavyweight-championship belt. Scarcely a year after the final volume of her massive Boudica quartet of historical novels, she bounces back into the ring with her challenge for the Cryptic Treasure Cup of 2008. Will she successfully slug it out with the numerous contenders who have followed in the footsteps of Dan Brown?

The Crystal Skull is a pretty convincing performance. Keen speleologist Dr Stella Cody and her new husband, Kit, discover a blue crystal skull hidden deep below ancient rocks in the Yorkshire Dales. This beautiful, powerful object must be retrieved and re-united with others to save the world from ultimate disaster. Saving the World is always what the Cryptic Treasure Hunt is about, but it's how you tell it that counts. Scott, inspired by a real crystal skull in the British Museum, makes a dashing job of it.

The puzzles multiply. Can we trust the enigmatic Kit? He has fulfilled Stella's dearest wish: to find her a cave with buried treasure, but it's so dangerous that they nearly drown. Who is the enigmatic Cambridge professor who intervenes both in the caving disaster which paralyses Kit, and the unravelling of the mystery of the manuscript? There's always a manuscript, and lovers of the genre will not be disappointed here.

The record takes us back to the 16th century, when Cedric Owen, Cambridge scholar and friend of Nostradamus, sails for the New World and, along with a dashing Spanish sailor, discovers the skull in the Mayan city of Zama. There a powerful and erotic female presence reveals the secrets of the skulls.

When Owen has to amputate his companion's arm, he observes the healing powers of the blue skull and brings it home. The more conventional treasure he acquires forms the basis of Bede's College, and 32 volumes of his works wait to be translated by our sleuths. The skull had to be hidden from enemies, so there is a chase which culminates in Owen's sacrifice for the sake of the mysterious object.

The Elizabethan account is interwoven with the modern narrative, and Scott's experience as a crime writer has stood her in good stead when it comes to the skilled handling of a complex story. She's also good on historical feeling, with a strong grasp of the fearful nature of the Elizabethan world, with its dark side of religious persecution and Machiavellian entrapment. There are atmospheric descriptions of various worlds: scary caverns, Tudor universities, the land of the Mayans. The book is literate, fast-moving, and, most importantly, clearly written for love. Plus: there are no Templars. Our fly-weight has knocked the other contenders out of the ring.

living.scotsman.com
By Claire Black

WHAT will you be doing on December 21, 2012? With four days to go until Christmas Day, chances are you'll be waiting once again in an impossibly long queue for an enormous turkey that may well take until the dawn of the New Year to consume.

If the ancient Mayans have predicted correctly, you need not worry about turkey or trimmings for on the 21st day of the 12th month in five years' time, the day when the Mayans' Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar completes its 13th b'ak'tun cycle, the world will end. It's certainly one way to get out of another festive shop-athon.

This apocalyptic vision is the core of Manda Scott's latest book, The Crystal Skull. The novel combines the adrenaline of a crime narrative with the detail of a historical saga, and for the most part it works.

As well as portending our collective destruction, the Mayans also provided the means by which we might prevent "the catastrophe that man will wreak on God's earth": an exquisite sapphire carved into the likeness of a human skull. As the narrative shuttles between contemporary Cambridge and Elizabethan England, protagonists Dr Stella Cody and fellow Cambridge academic and husband, Kit O'Connor, struggle to crack ancient codes and stay one step ahead of a lethal predator, not to mention cope with the burden of saving the world.

Meanwhile, Cody's 16th century counterpart, Cedric Owen, a physician and keeper of the skull, travels through old Europe to the New World – meeting Nostradamus, a dashing Spanish sea captain and numerous religious zealots along the way – tasked with hiding the heart-stone in order that it may be found 400 years hence, just in time to avert disaster.

It's no surprise that Scott has united her literary interests – historical fiction and crime – in this latest offering. The Glasgow-educated vet began her literary career with a crime trilogy (Hen's Teeth, Night Mares and Stronger Than Death) built around lesbian psychiatrist Dr Kellen Stewart, before writing a one-off police procedural (No Good Deed). She then turned her back on gritty contemporary crime for the altogether more learned, if no less violent, world of the warrior queen, Boudica. A four-part, best-selling series ensued and Scott cemented her reputation for historical writing.

Although beneath the book's extravagant premise Scott weaves a reasonably convincing tale of derring-do, anchored by compelling characterisation, a raft of historical detail and the kind of pacey prose familiar to readers of her earliest crime novels, there is an uneasy balance between the mystical elements underpinning the prophecy of the skull and the scientific rationalism which Cambridge scientists (and secular readers) expect. Scott does attempt, now and then, to bridge the gap between these two positions, but in a rather half-hearted, and as a result, only partly successful way.

The novel is weakest when Scott allows her characters to evangelise about the need for a more ecologically and historically aware mode of being. It's not that the concerns aren't valid, but rather the heavy-handed parallels between contemporary environmental concerns and the supposed fate of the Mayan civilisation – brought to an untimely end in the space of only 50 years through their over-consumption of resources – tend to jar.

Scott is a fine plotter, though, and although there are no huge surprises as to who the villains are, the strength of the characterisation – particularly of the protagonists Stella Cody and Cedric Owen – and the cast which includes Elizabeth I's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and a collection of dastardly academics from both the past and present, is as compelling as the final outcome.

At its heart, The Crystal Skull is a rollicking adventure story. Happily, Scott's taut narrative, dense plotting and characterisation allow the book to rise above its more mystical pretensions.