This book came to me because I went sailing in the Ionian, and the pilot's guide mentions it is set in the area around the Meganisi Strait. At times I found it a little slow and ponderous, and it is hard to find any of the characters likable. The main character is on the run from having killed a man, and is content to do what he has to to survive. As the book goes on, his attempts at a little light smuggling to make some money get strangely tangled up in his father's academic passions and politics, as he sails around the Greek Islands.

The climax of the book is a dark scene where he rediscovers his father, who has both finally found the painted cave he has searched for all his life, and brutally murdered his academic rival. It is true that his father basically wishes to be left to die in the cave, but my gut naive reaction is that this is ridiculous, he still has his diving gear, surely he could go back with some water, or some food, or... but this is not that book. This book is Man the Hunter, Man the Killer, war coming from the middle east, and everyone aware of the darkness gathering.

The Evil Academic has the uncomfortable back story of being a self made man, an errand boy from Bradford who had volunteered at the library, got into grammar school, and made it to university. It was hard to know what to take from this, whether it was a deep and uncomfortable 'all self made men are liars and cheats and will steal and plagiarise' political position, or just some flavour text that didn't go anywhere. And Paul's father at times seems much more committed to revenge than to actually chasing pure scientific truth and sharing it.

Ugh. A dark book in the grey spaces of life, full of people hurting people, the threat of communist spies, obsession and jealousy and lies and secrets. It has some truly compelling passages (I still shiver when I think of the torchlight playing over the giant bulls on the roof of the long lost cave, blood red) and it is good to read outside my comfort zone, but it's a cold dark place and I would rather be somewhere warmer for a little while. ( )

As he was to do later, in Solomons Seal, Hammond Innes, here, indulges his tendency to conduct the reader through a specialist's understanding of an arcane subject area they might have little exposure to. In Solomons Seal, it would be the often obscure world of philately, or stamp collecting. With Levkas Man, it was the much broader and much more challenging subject of anthropology and the study of early man.

Innes' story unfolds gradually, as does the mystery at the core of it. Set against the backdrop of the Aegean Sea, however, such a pace is fitting. Not only does the very atmosphere of the warm Mediterranean world seem appropriate to the slow moving structure of the plot, so does the mystery and search to solve it fit into the timeless world of ancient artifacts, smugglers, and the embattled race to find the record of early man's entry into the sea's islands. Meanwhile, as ever seems to be the case, all is threatened with the onslaught of yet another war in the Middle East. Not even the soothing landscapes of an older world can escape the threat of imminent destruction wielded by modern man, who is only following in the violent footsteps of his ancient forebearers.

Finally, a note about the protagonist, Paul Van der Voort. Something enjoyable about Innes is that he creates some very flawed heroes. And Paul Van der Voort is among his more flawed. That does nothing, however, than make his story all the more interesting and unpredictable. The details of life often get in the way of neat little resolutions in Innes' novels. So it happens, here. Rootless Paul is as much a mystery at the end as he was in the beginning. That doesn't mean the exploration of his character--and his relationship with his father--was anything less than complete. Just that people often retain something unknowable about them, often unknowable even to themselves. ( )

Great setting (Holland and then the Greek islands) and an intriguing premise but I couldn't warm to the main character. Since the book is written in the first person by that character, it interfered with my enjoyment of the book as a whole. ( )

Power struggles in the esoteric world of academia, and the hunt for the evidence to prove on theory over another. And a father's love ofr his son and the duty of family ties. A suprisingly gripping read for such a subject.

After re-read

Paul Van de Voot adopted son of the famous (infamous) Dr. Van de Voot arrives home in Amsterdam sometime in the 1970s. His father is not at home, but a housekeeper /assisstant called Sonia Winters informs him that he's been out in Greece for some time without word and people are becoming concerned for him. Paul doesn't care. He's only interested in money and a refuge from his past. However the only job he can get takes him out to Greece, where in his spare time he starts trying to find his father and becomes embroiled in the academic controversy surrounding the descent and origin of Modern man.

There are some minor plot quibbles - can you really use a geiger counter to measure significant differences in acheological specifimins? How does Hans get out of the cave? I'm sure expert historians would disagree with the archeology - however the question hasn't been settled even yet. But basically this is good work, the descriptions are apt, the caving passages particularly so - I'm less sure of the diving ones.

Tightly written it does drag once or twice but holds the tensions between the characters and the landscape very well - academia isn't the dusty place that everyone imagines. ( )