Baker Street Irregulars discussion

Dear Fellow group members:

I'm taking the liberty of writing to let people know about my forthcoming book, "The Riddle of the Labyrinth," to be published on May 14 by Ecco Press/HarperCollins.

The book is narrative nonfiction -- but will be of special interest to this group in that it chronicles the solution of a real-life mystery: the quest to decipher a curious script from the Bronze Age known as Linear B.

Inscribed on clay tablets in about 1450 B.C., Linear B was unearthed on Crete in 1900 and, despite the best efforts of investigators from around the world, remained undeciphered for more than half a century. Not only did no one know what the mysterious tablets said, no one even knew what language they were written in.

As a result, Linear B was considered one of the most intractable puzzles in history, and the book documents the lives -- obsessed, brilliant, triumphant and ultimately deeply tragic -- of the real-life detectives who worked to unravel its secrets. It is also a paleographic procedural, taking readers step by step through the forensic process involved in unraveling a secret code from the past.

I hope you will enjoy "The Riddle of the Labryinth" as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

I will be delighted to answer any questions about the book that anyone has; people are welcome to contact me directly at margalitfoxbooks@gmail.com.

With all my best wishes from a very chilly New York,

Margalit Fox

sounds like a interesting read ,looking forward to doing so

Why, thank you; that's lovely!

Sounds like my kind of book. Can you give us any pre-publication hints regarding new things that you have discovered about Ventris, etc.?

Thanks for asking, Hugh. The one hint I can give right now is that the new stuff has less to do with Ventris and much more to do with our own Alice Kober, an overworked, underpaid Classics professor at Brooklyn College, whose work beyond dispute helped Ventris crack the code. She turns out to be the great unsung heroine of the Linear B decipherment, and the book tells her story in full for the first time anywhere.

All my best,
Margo

Ah, now that sounds very interesting indeed. I will forget that your book is coming out, so please send me a private message when it is published, so I can order it. Thanks.

I'll be delighted to. Good night.