The period of ancient Egyptian history called the New Kingdom is the setting for the second installment of N.L. Holmes’ Lord Hani mystery series, The Crocodile Makes No Sound. Egypt is in turmoil under King Akhenaten’s controversial policies, and when Hani’s brother-in-law, Amen-em hut, is heard criticizing Akhenaten’s rule, he soon goes missing. As if that weren’t enough for Hani to be dealing with, Hani’s friend Kiya, who happens to be the king’s wife, is being blackmailed over an affair with a sculptor.

But throughout all the political scheming and complicated mystery-solving, Hani’s world is always centered on his family as Holmes brings the day-to-day lives of ordinary people to life:

All at once, Hani was conscious of a rush of bare footsteps and a swirl of skirt bearing down on him. He dragged his eyes away from the letter to see that Neferet, his youngest, had approached with her usual impetuosity and was standing in front of him, hands on hips.

“What can I do for you, my love?” he said, smiling at the sight of her dressed like a young lady, her child’s sidelock transmuted into the tiny braids of maidenhood. I can’t believe it. The last of our children, almost grown.

“I’ve decided something, Papa,” she said earnestly, and seated herself on the floor beside him, pulling up her skirt to cross her legs with greater ease. At thirteen, she was still the stocky, broad-shouldered little hoyden he loved, despite the dress. “I’ve decided I want to be a physician—a sunet.”

“Is this something new? I don’t believe you’ve ever mentioned it.”

“I thought you wanted to be a horse,” said Maya with a straight face. Hani tried not to laugh.

Kirkus Reviews calls the novel “a satisfying mystery in a vividly realized historical setting,” which only makes sense given that Holmes is a professional archaeologist with a doctorate from Bryn Mawr. (She was a cloistered nun for 20 years and has worked as an artist, an antiques dealer, and an executive assistant.) Holmes, who splits her time between Florida and Northern France, has participated in excavations in Greece and Israel and has taught ancient history to university students.

In fact, it was a teaching assignment that inspired her to start writing fiction in the first place: she had given her students information about an ancient royal divorce and instructed them to “describe what happened.” The assignment led to Holmes’ considering how constructing narratives around historical documents was much like creating fictional characters and worlds.

But she didn’t start out writing mysteries. Instead, Holmes’ first series was more of a psychological drama with darker, meaner characters. As Holmes was writing it, she found she wanted to switch to a different kind of genre. “I was so tired of living in the heads of these people for months,” she says. “I decided to do something heartwarming and pleasant. To have kind, funny protagonists, and for good to triumph over evil. Mysteries are a genre where everything comes out all right at the end; questions are answered, and justice is done.” 

The New Kingdom was attractive as a setting for the same reason that Holmes found it so fascinating as a historian: Very little is actually known about it, which means there’s lots of room for imagination and speculation. “The reign of Akhenaten was unimaginably revolutionary,” says Holmes. “He took millennia-old beliefs and customs and institutions and overturned them unilaterally. The social and economic fallout must have been mind-exploding. You know there were lots of angry people plotting mayhem—his successors literally expunged him from history. A great moment for a story of political intrigue!”

Many of the characters in the Lord Hani series, including Hani himself, are based on real historical figures. Holmes says she feels like she needs to “apologize to the shades of those people for any injustices I committed in bringing them back to life” because there’s not enough known about them for their personalities to be anything but pure fiction. But Holmes uses her training as a historian to find grains of truth to inspire her writing.

For example, she says that historians know Hani was a real diplomat, that he really did complete missions over a career of about 20 years, and also that he was considered trustworthy and likable. Starting from these facts, Holmes considered what kind of person might have that legacy and build that reputation, then created the character of Lord Hani from there. 

But readers will likely note the attention to detail Holmes pays to Hani’s home life and the day-to-day living of her more ordinary characters. As a teacher, she believes in helping her students understand that historical figures were real people, just like modern people. They made human choices that made it into history books, and their lives were real, too.

As for the ancient Egyptians, Holmes says, “We know they were devoted to their families, that their women had lots of rights and soft power and could even be bosses over men. We know they were tolerant toward the handicapped, respectful to the old, and sexually open.” Using these facts, Holmes aims to create characters modern readers can recognize and empathize with. She thinks this aspect of her writing is important to her because as an archaeologist, she’s spent plenty of time working with normal items like cookware and toiletries, the kinds of things people use daily.

Many writers of historical fiction fall into the trap of overloading the reader with information, but Kirkus notes that while “the danger of such a carefully researched subject is that the material can capsize the plot, Holmes ably inserts historical exposition into her storytelling,” adding that the “overstuffed cast makes for more suspects and opportunities for sequels.”

As for those sequels, Holmes says she has the “sixth and last Lord Hani book ready to go to the editor” and that she’s also planning a companion series starring Hani’s daughter, as well as some prequels. She also is getting ready to produce another book for Amazon’s serial genre, Vella. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn.