E-Book Review: "The Phoenix Apostles: A Seneca Hunt Myster" by Joe Moore and Lynn Sholes

I read this entire e-book in one sitting! It is absolute proof that a book doesn't have to be perfectly edited to be a great read.  It appears to have been formatted for print publication, which led to some real formatting issues in the Kindle edition, but once the story grabbed me I quit worrying about the formatting and simply read as fast as my eyes would go.

Seneca Hunt is a magazine writer who is engaged to a renowned archaeologist. He has just discovered the location of Montezuma's tomb in Mexico City. Once they reveal the contents of the discovery, he will achieve archaeological immortality and she will get the magazine scoop of a lifetime. After that, they plan to retreat to an island and get married. Unfortunately, someone who evidently does not want the contents of the tomb to be revealed, plants a bomb and kills Seneca's fiance.  She is determined to find out who did it and why.

She teams up with a novelist whose research on his next book has uncovered a strange coincidence that he thinks may have some bearing on the Mexico City bombing.  With a lot of (initially unwanted) help from Seneca's estranged father (a recently retired spy of some sort who's probably going to show up in more novels in this series), they uncover a bizarre conspiracy to steal the bones of some of the history's most notorious mass murderers for a purpose that I'm not going to describe because it will sound too incredible to suspend disbelief. I can tell you, however, it works in the context of the story world.

Generally, I'm okay with having some loose ends remaining at the end of a book, and it's okay if some characters' motivations are left a little murky.  This one pushed the envelope for me a bit on both counts in that there was less resolution than I would have liked and there were more unexplained coincidences than I generally will tolerate.  All of which paled to insignificance beside the suspense of the main story line that does not let up until the final pages.

I was exhausted by then end, which is just how a readers is supposed to feel at the end of an action/ suspense novel. I will definitely read more of these authors' work!


Buy it here.