Lara McClintoch novels - Book Reviews

Lara McClintock Archaelogical Mystery series
by Lyn Hamilton
Berkeley Prime Time
Authors website
The Etruscan Chimera 2002
The Thai Amulet 2004
The Chinese Alchemist 2007

I have just read Lyn Hamilton's website, sadly to learn Lyn died of cancer in September 2009. She was 65 years old.

The Etruscan Chimera

A Chimera is a mythological animal with the head and body of a lion, a second head of a goat and a serpent for the tail.

Lara McClintock is hired by a reclusive and wealthy collector, Crawford Lake, to purchase the Bellerophon statue that goes with the Arezzo Chimera. The Bellerophon is in France. The Chimera is already in the Arezzo museum in Italy and Lake wants to get them back together. These two pieces of art was created by the Etruscans who lived in Italy before the Roman Empire began. Both of these names (Bellerophon and Chimera are mentioned in Book six of the Iliad.

While trying to purchase the Bellerophon, Lara becomes involved in the theft of an Etruscan Hydria water jug. She also finds the private collector who owned the hydria dead. On her way to see Mr Lake, Lara finds the hydria again. She inadvertantly smuggles the hydria across the border from France into Italy.

Lara eventually discovers that Mr Lake is not who he says he is, and that there is a group of Etruscan fanatics who are stealing Etruscan artifacts from private collections around the world and smuggling them into Italy to be held at a private museum.

The Thai Amulet

A young friend of Lara's named Jennifer, has fallen in love with a fellow university student. This student is from Thailand and Jennifer is off to Thailand to meet his family. At the same time William Beauchamp goes missing in Thailand and his wife asks Lara to look for him, so Lara accompanies Jennifer to Thailand. William had sent his wife some amulets and Lara takes them back to Thailand with her.


Once in Thailand, Jennifer discovers that her boyfriend is the first born son of a well known Thai family that own a huge business corporation. The son is being groomed to take over the mansgement from the father and will not be permittrd to marry a foreigner. Jennifer is heartbroken.

Meanwhile Lara begins looking for William. She also find out that the amulets that william sent to his wife are very bad. They are not the usual designs. And Lara finds another mystery. Where 50 years previously an american woman had killed her husband and child and then disappered.

In this book Lara solves the mystery of the 50 year old murder, and the secret of the amulets.

I learnt a lot about Thai history, culture and geography in this book.


The Chinese Alchemist

A wealthy Eurasian collecter in Toronto(Dorothy Matthews) ask Lara to bid on a small chinese box that is going up for sale at a local auction. The box is withdrawn from the sale just minutes befor the sale is due to start. Dorothy dies from the stress. Some months later, the box agains comes up for auction - only this time in Beijing.


Lara is asked by Dorothy's widow to go to Beijing and see if she can purchase the box. At the auction the box is stolen in plain site of several viewers including Lara. Lara follows the thief to Xian where she discovers that Dorothy's family have been raiding an unknown imperial tomb from the area and that the 3 boxes originally came from this tomb.

The 3 boxes are engraved with parts of a recipe on them - the recipe to immortality.

Mao's Last Dancer - Book Review

Mao's Last Dancer
by Li Cunxin
Berkeley/Penguin 2003
Author's Website

We have all heard of Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Barishnikov, Natalia Makarova- all three famous Ballet stars who defected from Communist Russia in the 1970s to find freedom in the west.


How many of you have ever heard of a Chinese dancer name Li Cunxin (Lee ShwenSing)? Probably most of you are saying, WHO?

Well this is his story. Those of you from Texas may remember his defection in 1981 when he was held captive in the chinese consulate (in Houston) for 21 hours, along with several american friends, because he was choosing to NOT return to China as he was supposed to.

This is the autobiography of Li Cunxin that chronicles his life in China under Mao Tse Tung (Zedong). Li was born in 1961 in a very poor village in Qingdao Province (on the Shandong Peninsula north of Beijing). He was the 6th of 7 sons - there being no one-child policy in those days. Li's eldest brother was 13 years his senior. Li grew up as a epasant child, and did not srat school until the age of 9.

At the age of 11, he was picked by his teacher to be sent to the Beijing Dance Academy where he would learn Ballet. Li spent 7 long years in Beijing, only going home for a brief 3 week vacation at the chinese new year (in February - the middle of winter). For seven years Li danced and was educated from 5.30 am to 9pm for 6 days of the week, only have one day off for himself.

In 1979 Li finally won an opportunity to visit USA on a dance scholarship. He was to spend 6 weeks in Texas as a student learning the more famous western ballets (swan lake, nutcracker etc) none of which he had learned.

One of the things Li had been taught as a child was that America was a very evil place. The Americans hated anyone who was not white, they enslaved the black people and there were many people sleeping on the streets. Which meant that Americans were very poor.

When Li Cunxin went to Texas in 1979, he finally understood that Mao Tse tung (Mao Zedong) had lied to the chinese people. Yes there were American people living in the streets, but nowhere near as many as the chinese government had claimed. Ordinary middle class Americans owned their own houses with indoor plumbing. Li grew up in a small village with an outhouse.

When Li returned home after that short trip, he begged his teachers to allow him to go to America again. He really wanted to learn how to dance better. Finally in 1980 Li was given permission to return to USA for 1 year.

In 1981, just before he was due to return to China, Li went to the chinese consulate in Houston, Texas and told the officials there that he would not be returning to china. They refused to let him leave. Li spent 21 hours stuck in the consulate before an agreement was reached between the Chinese and US governments for Li to be allowed to stay. Mr Bush (Later President Bush 41) was the one who was most responsible for this. Part of the agreement was for Li to never write a book about his life. He kept that rule for 20 years but has now decided to tell the world the truth.

This is Li in 2006 - aged 45.

Li stayed in USA for 16 years. He was married twice but the first marriage did not work out. He remarried an Australian dancer. Li Cunxin, his wife and his children all now live in Australia.



This was an excellent book. This is the real story of what it's like to grow up in Communist China. A movie of Li's life is due to be released shortly.

Mao's Last Dancer Movie - to be shown at Toronto Film Festival September 2009

Mao And Then - Sydney Morning Herald October 2007

Sorrow Mountain - Book Review

Sorrow Mountain
The Remarkable Story of a Tibetan Warrior Nun
by Ani Pachen & Adelaide Donnelly
Bantam Books 2001
Forward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Preface by Richard Gere
This is the story of Pachen Dolma "Ani", a Tibetan woman born in the region of Gonjo in 1933. The only daughter of the local chieftain, Ani grew up learning the things a chieftain must know. When she over heard her parents arranging a marriage for her, she fled to a monastery and became a buddhist nun.


In 1949 the Chinese invaded Eastern Tibet (the Province now called Qinghai - but in Tibetan it is called Amdo). As the years passed, the Chinese slowly moved southwards. By 1958 the Chinese had invaded the region called Kham in Eastern Tibet where Ani lived. That same year when her father died, Ani came home and became the village chieftain. The Chinese were getting closer every day, and she called for the village people to evacuate. The plan was to walk south to the Himalayas, ahead of the Chinese, and hopefully to cross the border into India, where the Dalai Lama was living. They never made it.

Ani was captured by the Chinese and spent the next 21 years [1960 to 1981] in prisons. She was finally released in 1981, and then spent several years following her childhood dream and learning the Buddhist way, under a teacher. She was in Lhasa during the 1987 & 1988 riots, and shortly after, she was told that the Chinese were following her. So Ani decided that it was a good time to leave. Ani took a long and perilous journey via Mt Kailash over the mountains into Nepal, and then into Northern India. In 1989 Ani arrived in Dharamsala and got to meet the Dalai Lama. Only then did she finally feel truely free.

Ani Pachen died in 2002.

In light of the current uprising in Tibet - on the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's being forced into exile, I feel that this book is an excellent book for learning about the Tibetan culture, and how proud they are of their independence. They are a peaceful people, they love freedom, and all they ask of China - is to let them be a free nation.

For those of you reading about China claiming that the Tibetan monks were rioting and causing the Chinese to shoot - well here is proof that the chinese LIED. Photo of Chinese soldiers wearing monks clothing. It's not the first time they have done this.

Friends of Tibet - News and History
Ani Pachen Obituary
Wikipedia biography