Prostitution may not be the world’s oldest profession. Tomb robbing is a far more likely candidate.

Even after leaving the active world of archaeology, the reality of its sordid underbelly continued to, if not exactly haunt me, remain on my radar. Ironically, in 2005, 20 years after the initial Getty Museum scandal of smuggled and forged artifacts, history repeated itself, this time complete with a splashy court case.

If it had ended there, I might not have written The Mask Hunter.

Back in 1985, I had been hired to write a catalog of antiquities sold to Gulfstream founder Allen Paulson. The work had been completed and I had not given it any thought for the last 3 decades. However, in 2015, I had a chance conversation at a baby shower in San Diego with the attorney for the widow of Allen Paulson, more recently divorced from oil magnate T. Boone Pickens. He shared that he had recently assisted with the repatriation of stolen Italian artifacts found in her garage. When I got home I checked my catalog and there was, at the very end, the two Pompeiian frescos in question with a notation to omit them because they were “hot”! This made me realize that corruption in the antiquities world was ongoing.

The Mask Hunter tells the story of the malfeasance of the antiquities trade through the lens of a fictional funerary mask of Alexander the Great.

The novel is an archaeological mystery, the centerpiece of which is the fictional golden death mask of Alexander the Great. Initially discovered in Egypt, it is smuggled through the underground channels and into the hands of the curator of the Getty Museum. Very soon, both the curator and The Mask drop from sight. Years later, former archaeologist Parthi Guthrie is brought into the search for The Mask by her former husband and shady underground antiquities dealer, Barry Epstein. The quest for The Mask takes them throughout the world, including the Vatican. During the hunt, people are killed, and Parthi barely escapes with her life.

Although The Mask and all the characters are pure fiction, the underlying story of the process of smuggling antiquities from their places of origin into major museums and private collections is completely factual and the information on Alexander the Great is historically accurate.