Gabrielle LaPlante felt out of her element on the site of the archaeological dig. She was a forensic anthropologist for the Dade Museum of Human History, and she normally did her work in the lab. But she had been assigned to help the archaeological team identify a human skeleton they’d located, and here she was in the South American jungle. Already made nervous by the mounting death toll of the native workers on the dig, Gaby was further alarmed by having to spend a night in a recently excavated tomb due to an accident on the site. Maybe that was why she dreamed that the warrior statue she’d found in the chamber came to life and made love to her. But was it a dream when the warrior turned up to haunt her when she returned home to Miami?

I was hooked from the very beginning on this well-written story! In it, the author takes a very scientific discipline -- archaeology -- and uses it as the foundation for a ghost story! The plot is fast-paced and the writing is skillful, with colorful descriptions and rough emotions deftly communicated. I loved the way Ms. Montague knowledgeably described the different aspects of archaeological method and pulled them together to illustrate the ancient background of a modern story. The main characters, Gaby and Anka, have both positive and negative traits, making them complete people; I was riveted by their experiences and was rooting for them from beginning to end. This story has explicit sex scenes which are very intense. I highly recommend this short novel as a fascinating and engrossing read.

Reviewed by: Jean