Curses! — Aaron Elkins

STICKS AND STONES...AND BONES

Mayan ruins in the Yucatan ... a secret room in a tomb ... an ancient skeleton. To Gideon Oliver, anthropologist, this archaeological find is paradise on earth. He and his wife, Julie, have joined his old mentor, Abe Goldstein, at Tlaloc, Mexico, to make sure there are no dirty doings at the dig. Five years before scandal rocked the site when a colleague ran off with a priceless relic. Now Abe suspects something illegal is again going on. The discovery of a Mayan curse protecting the ruins suddenly makes Tlaloc seem closer to hell than heaven. But the mysteries waiting inside the stone temples are too tempting to let mere words scare away the famous "skeleton detective." Only when the curse seems to be coming true and Gideon has a modern murder to solve does evil stop being academic... and death in the Yucatan seem imminently real.