A
journalist is murdered in Jerusalem’s Armenian Cathedral and Detective Arieh
Ben-Roi is spoilt for leads. One however seems out of place - a link to a
decades -old missing person’s case in Egypt. Baffled, he turns to Inspector
Yusuf Khalifa of Luxor Police to help.
Although
struggling with personal tragedy and immersed in a case of his own - a series of
mysterious well poisonings in the Eastern Desert - Khalifa agrees to do some
digging. What he discovers will change both men’s lives forever.
As
their investigations intertwine, the detectives are drawn ever deeper into a
sinister web of violence, abuse, corporate malpractice and international
terrorism. At the heart lies a three-thousand-year-old mystery that has already
taken two lives and will soon be claiming more.
This
is not a book I would have chosen to read normally, but I was running our of
titles I fancied listening to in the Library audio book list. I’m glad I picked
it. It’s a long book and was really interesting to listen to as I did my chores.
I enjoyed it so much that I bought the book second hand so that I could look up
references and read sections.
It’s
an exciting thriller with several subplots, loads of suspense and unexpected
twists and turns. There are also some surprises and nasty shocks. The book is
certainly unputdownable and a page turner, though there were some action bits I
felt were a bit drawn out.
I
loved the characters of Arieh and Khalifa . Of course their bosses were arrogant
and inept and the villains were truly evil, vicious and despicable.
I
still don’t know who murdered the female reporter at the start of the book. I’m
going to have to go through it again to sort that out from the hints dropped
along the way.
This
is the fourth in a series, but is fine as a stand-alone read. I will certainly
read the other three books in the series, which have been translated into over
thirty languages and sold over two million copies. Sussman’s books have been
described as the intelligent reader’s answer to the Da Vinci Code. Paul’s
journalism has appeared in the Big Issue, Independent, Guardian, Evening
Standard and CNN. He also wrote a book called Death by Spaghetti
which is culled from the News pages of the Big Issue and described as a
compilation of rib tickling, bizarre and bonkers true stories.
In
his Biography, Paul Sussman wrote:
For
as long as I can remember, the two great loves of my life have been writing and
archaeology (three if you include travelling in out of the way places,
especially deserts). For many years I worked as a field archaeologist in Egypt,
notably in Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, and all my novels to a greater or
lesser extent draw on my experiences excavating and living in Egypt and the
Middle East. My main protagonist, Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor Police,
is a composite of a number of people I know, and while his colourful adventures
are products purely of my imagination, the world he inhabits is very much a real
one.
Through
Khalifa I try to explore issues such as terrorism, contemporary Middle East
politics, religion and government corruption, all against a backdrop of the
extraordinary history and archaeological heritage of that part of the
world.
Whilst
working as an archaeologist, among other finds, he unearthed the only items of
pharaonic jewellery to have been excavated in the Valley since the discovery of
Tutankhamun in 1922.
Sadly
Paul died suddenly in May 2012 after suffering a ruptured aneurysm having
recently finished writing the Labyrinth of Osiris. He was just forty
five.
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