An entertaining whodunit set in a richly textured panorama of the pharaonic world.
An ancient Egyptian sleuth investigates murder and, worse, tomb robbery in this colorful period mystery.
It’s 1343 B.C.E., and Egyptian diplomat Amen-hotep, aka Lord Hani, gets the delicate assignment from his boss, Ptah-Mes, and the vizier, Aper-el himself, to investigate a series of robberies of noblemen’s tombs in his hometown of Waset. The robberies are rumored to involve a Mitannian foreigner with diplomatic immunity. These are heinous crimes warranting impalement, since the theft of the tombs’ foodstuffs, exquisite jewelry, and luxurious furniture has left the victims with nothing to eat, wear, or sit on in the afterlife. Complicating the case are the victims’ sketchy religious politics: They were all, like Hani, skeptics of King Akhenaten’s overthrow of Egypt’s polytheistic pantheon and establishment of the monotheistic worship of the sun god Aten. Further complicating matters are an outbreak of plague and the intrusions of the brutal police chief Mahu, an enemy of Hani’s who keeps showing up with his retinue of thugs and his snarling attack-baboon to interfere with the probe. Helping out Hani are his dwarf scribe and son-in-law, Maya, who wants to work the case into an adventure story; his jovial dad, Mery-ra; his good-hearted, ne’er-do-well brother, Pipi; and his teenage daughter, Neferet, an apprentice physician at the king’s harem who handles the investigation’s toxicology. (She IDs one poison by mixing it with honey and feeding it to ants.) Amid epic voyages up and down the Nile, Hani unearths hidden murders and pursues a tangle of leads that could implicate the tomb artists, claimants for the Mitannian throne, renegade priests of the old gods, the Egyptian army, or the king’s father-in-law. But before he can unravel the knot, another untimely death ends his official backing and exposes him to dangerous retaliation.
In this latest installment of her Lord Hani series, Holmes, an archaeologist, embroiders a detailed, atmospheric portrait of ancient Egyptian civilization, mores, and high fashion—perfumed wax cones affixed to one’s wig are de rigueur at dinner parties—embedded in a warm, naturalistic depiction of Hani’s life with his wife, Nub-nefer, and family. There’s plenty of exotic pageantry in the novel: “Hani thought of Nub-nefer marching along, singing hymns and shaking her sistrum rhythmically, her face alight with fervor…his brother-in-law, Amen-em-hut, in his starred leopard skin and jeweled sporran, proudly bearing the ram-headed standard of the god as the glittering procession passed from the Great Southern Temple back to the Ipet-isut”—but humble domestic scenes are just as vivid. (“Nub-nefer was standing with her hands on her hips and her skirts tucked up while two naked servants carved the bloody carcass, packed it in salt, and prepared to hang strips on lines for smoking. The reek of blood and offal was horrific.”) Holmes renders this seemingly archaic society with subtlety and realism, rendering characters’ psychologies with sharp-eyed nuance. (Ptah-mes, a cool ironist who edges into depression, is especially magnetic.) Her deft prose skillfully conveys the Egyptian worldview—“How will the murderer keep a straight face at the Weighing of Hearts when he has to say, ‘I have not sinned in the Place of Truth; I have not caused tears; I have not killed; I haven’t taken milk from the mouths of children?’...He’s damned for sure, whoever he is”—while infusing it with noirish corruption and menace. (“I hear you have nice horses, Ptah-mes. Maybe we’ll have to slit them open to see if Talpu-sharri is hiding inside.”) The result is a captivating mix of old-fashioned lore and modern suspense.
An entertaining whodunit set in a richly textured panorama of the pharaonic world.Pub Date: July 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73498-685-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: N.L. Holmes
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.
A dramatic, complex imagining of the origins of Stonehenge.
In about 2500 B.C.E. on the Great Plain, Seft and his family collect flints in a mine. He dislikes the work, and the motherless lad hates the abuse he gets from his father and brothers. He leaves them and arrives at a wooden monument where sacred events such as the Midsummer Rite take place. There are also circles of stones that help predict equinoxes, solstices, even eclipses. This is a world where the customary greeting is “May the Sun God smile on you,” and everyone is a year older on Midsummer Day. Except for a priestess or two, no one can count beyond fingers and toes—to indicate 30, they show both hands, point to both feet, then show both hands again. Casual sex is common, and sex between women is less common but not taboo. Joia, a young woman who becomes a priestess, wonders about her sexuality. After a fire destroys the Monument, she leads a bold effort to rebuild it in stone. To please the gods, they must haul 10 giant stones from distant Stony Valley. Of course neither machinery nor roads exist, so the difficulties are extraordinary. Although the project has its detractors, hundreds of able-bodied people are willing to help. Craftspeople known as cleverhands construct a sled and a road, and they make the rope to wrap around the stones. Many, many others pull. And pull. Meanwhile, the three principal groups—farmers, woodlanders, and herders—all have their separate interests. There is talk of war, which Joia has never seen in her lifetime. Soon it seems inevitable that the powerful farmers will not only start one but win it, unless heroes like Seft and Joia can come up with a creative plan. But there is also the matter of love for Joia in this well-plotted and well-told yarn. The story has a lot of characters from multiple tribes, and they can be hard to keep track of. A page in the front of the book listing who’s who would be helpful.
Vintage Follett. His fans will be pleased.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781538772775
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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