The Last Step

The Last Step is a fast-moving, exciting archeological mystery thriller set among the Mayan ruins in Copan, Honduras, including the magnificent hieroglyphic stairway rediscovered by Harvard archeologists in the 1930s. The statues of five Mayan kings adorn the stairway, whose thousands of carved hieroglyphic stones recording the kings' reigns were dislodged by ancient earthquakes. Unable to decipher the stones, the archeologists reassembled them at random on the stairway's 64 steps. They also purloined and shipped one king's statue to the Harvard Peabody Essex Museum, where it remains today.

Harvard graduate student Alexis Hoffman, who seeks to return the stolen statue to Copan and to decipher the stairway, teams with electronics whiz Ben Acebo to develop novel computer techniques to catalog, correctly reassemble and "read" the hieroglyphic stones, and to reconstitute worn stone carvings and drawings. She also convinces Ben, lawyer/amateur archeologist David Elliot, and a sculptor friend to create an exact copy of the stolen king statue. The four then embark on a hazardous journey to return the duplicate statue to Copan, reassemble the stairway's hieroglyphic stones, discover the location of vast treasures removed from the five kings' burial chambers under the stairway, and discern the true meaning of December 21, 2012 -- the end of 5000 years of Mayan history. According to Mayan lore, what happened then can be explained only by deciphering certain hieroglyphic stones correctly reassembled on the last and highest step of the reconstituted stairway.

The team encounters international intrigue and bewildering clues found on Copan statues and ceramics, and in the four surviving Mayan books in Mexico City, Madrid, Paris and Dresden, Germany museums. They also endure sinister events at Harvard, a harrowing flight to a remote Honduran island, a dangerous trip through mountain roads and rivers, drug criminals, murderous witchdoctors, man-eating jaguars, snakes, missing stairway stones, and unknown saboteurs to return the statue, find the kings' relocated treasures, and decipher the cosmic meaning of the stairway's last step.