A Head in Cambodia
A Jenna Murphy Mystery
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
When the alluring, eleventh-century Cambodian stone head of Radha, consort to Krishna, shows up at the Searles Museum, young curator Jenna Murphy doesn’t suspect that it will lead her to a murder. Asian art is her bailiwick, not criminal investigation, and her immediate concern is simply figuring out whether the head is one famously stolen from its body, or a fake.
When a second decapitation happens—this time of an art collector, not a statue—Jenna finds herself drawn into a different kind of mystery, and the stakes are life or death. It turns out that the same talents for research and for unraveling puzzles—the bread and butter of an art historian—have perfectly equipped her to solve crimes. She’s certain the sculpture provides clues to help her solve the case, which takes her to Thailand and Cambodia. But the collectors, dealers, and con artists of the Bangkok art world only compound her questions.
A Head in Cambodia is the fiction debut of noted Asian art expert Nancy Tingley. Readers will delight in the rarified world of collecting, as well as getting to know Jenna, an intrepid and shrewd observer who will easily find her place among V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone, and other great female sleuths.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Tingley's intriguing if inconclusive first mystery starring Jenna Murphy, curator of Asian art at the Searles Museum in Marin County, Calif., P.P. Bhattacharya, a trustee and patron of the museum, shows Jenna a stone head that he thinks was stolen from a famous Cambodian sculpture five years earlier. P.P. bought the head at a garage sale of the family of collector Tom Sharpen, who was murdered decapitated in fact. Jenna learns enough about Sharpen's transactions with a Bangkok dealer who Sharpen thought cheated him to suspect that the dealer was a man called Grey. Jenna leads a group, which includes P.P., on a tour to Cambodia. During their tour of lovingly described temples, they encounter Grey, wealthy collector Mr. Cha, and an evil man known only as the Ghost. Life-threatening attacks derail Jenna and P.P.'s attempts to learn more about the stone head. Readers should be prepared for a Pollyannaish climax and a lack of clear answers to the assorted mysteries.
