TRACK OF THE SCORPION.

In the badlands of New Mexico, where the heat of a summer day can kill, archaeologist Nicolette Scott is working with her father on what she regards as just another routine dig. Her father, a grand old man of Southwestern archaeology, is excavating a thousand-year-old Anasazi Indian site. Nick and the professor are seeking proof that cannibalism was a way of life among the Anasazi.
But then Nick learns of a discovery an old prospector has made in sands not far from their site, and she embarks on a dig of her own. Buried in the desert is a World War II bomber, its mummified crew still on board. Stranger yet, the plane is riddled with bullet holes, as if it had been shot down during combat.
When Nick starts asking questions, all hell breaks loose. The more she investigates, the more the mystery of what the plane was doing there and why it crashed deepens, and the fifty-year-old deaths turn out to be the precursors of a peril that is very much alive. Nick has reawakened a monstrous conspiracy half a century old. Violence, betrayal, and murder will dog Nick's every step, until her only hope for survival is her own archaeological expertise.

Archeologist Nicolette Scott faces scorching New Mexico desert heat and a 50-year-old mystery in this action-packed debut. While at a dig with her father, an eminent Anasazi scholar, Nick learns of an airplane buried in the sand. Nick, who has already found a WWII B-24 in a New Guinea jungle, investigates and discovers a B-17, also from WWII, with its body shot up. Inside are the skeletal remains of 11 people, one more than the required crew. Nick wonders who the passenger was and why an American plane was shot down over New Mexico and abandoned. The coverup occurs as she begins to voice her questions. The plane, with a painted scorpion on its nose, is carted away, and then newspaper stories about its discovery are retracted. Accused of perpetrating a hoax, she is put on medical leave by the archeological department at UC-Berkeley. Then people who know of the plane's existence begin to die in what look like accidental deaths. Unwilling to drop her search, Nick follows clues to a millionaire businessman with a connection to 1940s atom bomb testing that ties into the B-17's fatal flight. Through her fast-paced probing to the conclusion in the desert, Nick proves herself an intelligent, game heroine whom readers will want to meet again.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gorgeous archaeologist in formula thriller peril--thanks to the discovery of a WW II bomber, buried for 50 years in the sands of New Mexico, and the unraveling of a heinous military-industrial conspiracy. Prof. Nickolette (``Nick'') Scott--Berkeley, untenured--is spending the summer in the brutally hot Badlands, helping her famous father excavate ancient Indian ruins. But Nick's own passion is digging up the recent past--so she can't resist the challenge when old prospector Gus Beckstead claims that he's uncovered the wing of an airplane. It's an incredible find: an American B-17, with 11 dead bodies aboard (the ten-man crew plus one mystery passenger), which was somehow shot down over the US circa 1945! Before Nick can begin the dig in earnest, however, the novel's cartoonish mega-villain--billionaire Leland Hatch, who ``owns'' numerous generals--sets a massive, often implausible coverup in motion. Beckstead is murdered; the B-17 disappears virtually overnight; Nick's academic career is sabotaged. Unfazed, as additional bodies drop around her, she sets out on a quest (guided by a diary found on the plane) to learn the how and why of the B- 17's downing. These opening chapters are fairly promising--with intriguing details of archaeological procedure, persuasive desert- town atmosphere, and that buried plane with its mummified crew (the WW II secret itself--involving Los Alamos and a foiled bit for peace--is serviceable enough). But Nick doesn't hold much character interest, despite some psychological wrangling about her dysfunctional mom and workaholic dad, so it's quite a wait for the conclusion--a painfully contrived death-duel in the desert between intrepid Nick and old Leland Hatch himself. Despite all the appeals, first-novelist Davis brings little conviction, and no originality, to conspiracy-suspense gambits limply reminiscent of Days of the Condor, Pelican Brief, and everything in between. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.