Mysteries Galore.com

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Hubert Schuze is a potter and mild mannered shop keeper in Albuquerque who is also known to some as “The Pot Thief.” Expelled from the University of New Mexico for digging outside the official dig site (even though –or maybe because, he found some great artifacts), Hubert has none the less, put his knowledge and talent to good use over the years. While selling legitimate pots in one shop, he also sells reproductions he makes in a neighboring shop. And what is Hubert’s side business? That’s where it gets interesting. Because Hubie has been known to “reacquire” pots from collectors and return them to their rightful owners-while making a bit for himself as well.

In The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, Hubert is approached by Walter Masoir, a professor forced out of the University because he disagreed with the department chair on returning all artifacts back to the native peoples. Masoir believes that when the various artifacts were eventually returned, some very old pots from the San Roque Pueblo were in fact kept by the same department chair who forced him out. He believes that Ogan Gerstner has the pots in his loft and he wants Hubert to steal them so that they can be returned to the Pueblo. That sets up the mystery for Schuze to solve.

Orenduff has created an extremely likeable protagonist in Hubert Schuze. He’s a thief, but for all of the “right” reasons much like Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr. In fact, this series is very much like the Block series with a couple of interesting twists. The books take place in and around Albuquerque instead of New York City, and all of the crimes deal with the Indian culture of the Southwest. Also, Orenduff has tied each of the books to a mathematician. Sprinkled throughout the book are references to not only what that person is known for, but other tidbits about his life. That element however, was stronger in the first book, The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras than this one, but is interesting none the less.

This book, at a little shy of two hundred and fifty pages, is a fairly quick read, but a highly enjoyable one for sure. Readers who have enjoyed the Bernie Rhodenbarr books will surely dig right in to this series. Fans of books set in the Southwest, among Native Cultures and who like their mysteries to be a bit on the light-hearted side will find these pleasing as well.