Levkas Man — Hammond Innes

The tale of an archaeological dig gone terribly wrong from “Great Britain's leading adventure novelist” (Financial Times).

When his parents died, Paul was sent to Amsterdam to live with his mother's old lover, the eccentric archaeologist Pieter Van der Voort. Paul became a man in that cramped, strange house, cooped up with skeletons, fossils, and his increasingly mad guardian, who was obsessed with the search for the origins of man.
 
Finally, Paul can take no more. He hops a freighter and spends eight years at sea before returning home to find Van der Voort gone -- and a mystery waiting in his place.
 
Van der Voort is in Greece on an archaeological expedition that's spiraling out of control. The last place Paul wants to be is at the old man's side, but he feels something drawing him toward the dig site. To reach Greece, he takes a job working for a smuggler, embarking on a journey that will carry him across the globe -- and into the blackest depths of history.
 
A rip-roaring archaeological adventure in the spirit of Indiana Jones, Levkas Man is a story about the fundamental desire that has defined all human history: the irresistible urge to kill.