THE GENESIS SECRET

A newspaper reporter covering an archaeological dig must help catch a gang committing a string of grisly murders in Knox’s debut thriller.

Rob Luttrell is getting bored in Tel Aviv. Oh, it was nice of his editor in London to give him time off to recover from witnessing a suicide bombing in Baghdad, but now he’s ready to get back to work. Luckily, he soon receives a new, more relaxed assignment: see what’s happening at Gobekli Tepe, an archaeological site in Kurdish Turkey, where German archaeologist Franz Breitner thinks he’s uncovering an ancient temple. Rob isn’t on the scene for long before he notices that the locals aren’t very welcoming to the archaeological team, which includes an osteoarchaeologist named Christine Meyer whom the divorced journalist finds quite appealing. The Kurds, Rob learns, resent the secrecy surrounding a dig they think could enrich their impoverished area with tourism. When Breitner falls to his death under suspicious circumstances, the Turkish police send Rob and Christine packing, allegedly for their safety. Meanwhile, back in England, Scotland Yard DCI Forrester is investigating a series of grisly murders that seem somehow linked to human sacrifice. Naturally, these two story lines collide, leaving Rob, Christine and his daughter Lizzie caught between a ruthless gang of killers and the ancient knowledge they seek. The chapters describing Luttrell’s initial sojourn in Kurdistan are excellent: moody and tense, subtly evoking a dark and ancient terror that lurks just out of sight. Regrettably, the dread so masterfully captured at first eventually gives way to a cartoonish series of shortcuts and outrageous coincidences. The end result is painfully disappointing, all the more so because the author has shown himself capable of much better. With a little more work, Knox could have produced an entire book as gripping as its early pages.

A well-wrought premise, undone by a series of lazy choices.