In one life, he is John Sandford, best-selling author of more than 23 novels in his popular Prey series, as well as 16 other books of mostly mystery adventures. When a new book comes out, his publisher takes out a full-page color ad featuring Sandford and the book in the New York Times. And oh, by the way, he also won a Pulitzer Prize for some journalism articles. His most recent book, Storm Front, came out in October (with the customary New York Times ad). More about that later.
In another life, he is John Camp. That’s his real name. In 1996 he visited Israel and told his guide that he would like to meet an archaeologist. The guide knew Amihai Mazar, a leading Israeli archaeologist, so he took Camp to Mazar’s office at Hebrew University. Camp told Mazar that he had been reading an interesting book about archaeology in Israel and would like to learn more. “Who was the book by?” Mazar asked. “By someone named Amihai Mazar,” was the reply. That was the beginning of their friendship.
This would be Ami Mazar’s last season of excavation at Beth Shean, so he invited Camp to join the dig as a volunteer. Mazar recalls that Camp really worked hard with a pickaxe. By the end of the season, Camp told Mazar that he would like to financially support an excavation. And that was how Ami Mazar’s path-breaking 11-year excavation at Tel Rehov, a few miles from Beth Shean, was conceived. The dig has ended, but the final report remains to be completed, and Camp is supporting that, too. In the meantime, Camp has become somewhat of an archaeologist himself. In a 2000 article on Tel Rehov published in BAR, Camp appears as the coauthor with Mazar.a
Which brings us back to Storm Front. In his new novel John Sandford/Camp takes on an archaeological adventure novel. A stele, written in hieroglyphs on one side and “primitive” Hebrew on the other, has been stolen from an archaeological excavation located near Beth Shean and within a few miles of the Jordan River. (This is precisely the location of Tel Rehov.) The stele has been smuggled out of Israel and taken to the United States, where the purported price is $5 million. The stele “might be the most powerful artifact since the discovery of the True Cross.” The prospective buyers include two Turks who could be affiliated with Hezbollah. A woman who identifies herself as Yael Aronov, an investigator from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), comes to America to try to recover the stele. She works with an American detective named Virgil Flowers, but she turns out to be something other than an IAA investigator. The chief suspect, named Elijah Jones, is a minister suffering from terminal cancer. To learn more you’ll have to read the book.—H.S.
In one life, he is John Sandford, best-selling author of more than 23 novels in his popular Prey series, as well as 16 other books of mostly mystery adventures. When a new book comes out, his publisher takes out a full-page color ad featuring Sandford and the book in the New York Times. And oh, by the way, he also won a Pulitzer Prize for some journalism articles. His most recent book, Storm Front, came out in October (with the customary New York Times ad). More about that later. In another life, he is John Camp. That’s his real […]
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