★ 2022-07-15
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 is 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.
