Ken Holt #17 Plumed Serpent and #18 Sultan's Scimitar

In Ken Holt #17, The Mystery of the Plumed Serpent, Ken and Sandy travel to Mexico with their new acquaintance, Ricardo, who owns a medallion that contains a map of an old hacienda.  The map is supposed to show the location of a treasure, and the boys decide to try to find it.  Unscrupulous people have the same plan, and they try to take the map away from the boys.

Rick Brant has sent Ken three Megabucks units which are small units with which the boys can speak to each other over a small distance.  This was an agreed-upon bit of cross promotion between the authors of the Ken Holt and Rick Brant series.

I greatly enjoyed this book.

In Ken Holt #18, The Mystery of the Sultan's Scimitar, Ken and Sandy travel in Europe.  While the boys visit a museum in Athens, the Golden Key is stolen.  The cylinder is an important Greek artifact, and the Greek are devastated by its disappearance.  It is believed that the thief will try to smuggle the cylinder out of the country.  Ken and Sandy find themselves unwitting participants in the conspiracy.

On page one, I saw that the book opens in Greece.  Oh, no!  I have an aversion to books set in Greece because I can't stand The Greek Symbol Mystery.  I hate that book!

Fortunately, this book is better than The Greek Symbol Mystery.

The book opens with the boys touring Greece.  Next, the Golden Key is stolen from a museum via a ruse.  Hmm... this part reminds me of the Three Investigators book, The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure.

I enjoyed most of this book, although some parts of it weren't that interesting to me.