One of the first things you notice about Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi is that it was written before The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles hit television. As such, there are moments that are in-sync with what we know of the Young Indy character, but these are obviously by luck and coincidence, than design.
Then there are some wildly off-base aspects. In the TV series, Indy is set up to have a clear interest in archaeology pretty early in life and, by 16 or so, knows he wants to be an archaeologist. In this novel, briefly set in 1920 but mostly set in 1922, Indy is in his early 20s and has finished college in the US, and is now studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Quite notably, however, his future is heading in a linguistics direction, not archaeology. As such, the shorthand for this adventure could be expressed as, “How Indiana Jones got a taste for archaeology and it changed his life forever…” It’s a prequel, really!
Even aspects that we know are canon – such as Indy serving in the Belgian army during WW1 – don’t get mentioned here because, again, the TV series just hadn’t happened yet. There’s even a scene where some tanks are spotted and a character asks what they are. Rather than describing them something like, “I’ve seen these before on the Western Front…” Indy’s response is noted as being more along the lines of how a history professor would describe them – which is cute, given his academic background, but also in-sync with there being no WW1 background for the character at the time this was written.
Despite these inconsistencies, I found it quite fun to be reading about Indy at this time in his life as, although some of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles see Indy home from WW1, there are only two movies set from 1920 – Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920 and Young Indiana Jones and the Hollywood Follies. It leaves a year like 1922 ripe for exploration. What was Indy doing? Well… this!
In a nutshell, one of the Sorbonne’s professors, Dorian Belecamus, absolutely fascinates and attracts Indy but she has a cold persona and they’ve never really had much to do with one another. So it’s a great surprise to him when she announces she’s off on a very important dig in Delphi, Greece, and wants Indy to go along for the ride as her assistant. Indy agrees to this, with a little trepidation, but is soon enjoying himself – and Professor Belecamus. However, this is by no means, “Indiana Jones loses his virginity to his professor” – he’s written as super comfortable with women already. It’s all very matter-of-fact.
Belecamus proves to be a very interesting character from the point of view that we have a broad idea of what she wants to do for most of the novel, but some of her motivations remain hidden or flip-flop at times, to the point where we perhaps start to feel like Indy does in the novel. He eventually catches on that remaining too involved with her will be bad news (just as we can see, as the reader), but still doesn’t have the full story behind her motivations – and neither do we. As such, she’s not one of the great Indiana Jones antagonists – in fact I feel she’s quite fond of Indy until the end – but she is the character whom the plot revolves around and who isn’t particularly likeable, so there’s a complexity about her.
Some aspects – like Indy wearing a leather jacket, a fedora and, at select times in the story, carrying a bullwhip – are all nods to the Indy we know and love. None of it’s delivered in any great detail, however, so I tried to imagine a prototype Indy wearing these things but not “the” hat or “the” jacket. I don’t think the cover illustrator got the memo, however, as they’ve drawn Indiana Jones as we know him from the films – yes, even with a MK VII British gas mask bag from WW2, even more anachronistic than ever here in 1922. But whatever. I appreciated what author Rob MacGregor was trying to do at least.
Speaking of MacGregor, who had previously novelised Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a couple of years prior to this novel’s release in 1991, he has a very simple and easy to read writing style. Even in some less than riveting moments in the story, it was still very easy to cruise through the chapters.
All told, this isn’t a brilliant, seat-of-your pants action sort of novel, but it has its moments. With such a youthful Indiana Jones in the driver’s seat, it gets away with not being like the original three movies, because the Indy in this novel (much like the Indy in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles), isn’t the Indy of the movies anyway. Also similar to the TV series, he gets to meet a high-profile person a couple of times (in this case, the King of Greece), so to return to the start of the review, although this was written before the TV series and absolutely has some discrepancies with it, you can still read the novel and broadly imagine it as part of some grander timeline without any difficulty. A middle of the road 7/10.