Sphinx

Best known for his medical novels, Robin Cook achieves a minor masterpiece with this exotic tale. Set in 1980, the story focuses on a week in Cairo and Luxor as the reader follows the intrigues of Erica Baron, an American Egyptologist. Caught in black market schemes of Egyptian antiquities, this young female protagonist directly witnesses vendor murder, mosque violence, and bodyguard assassination. To enhance the main storyline, Cook candidly develops the risk-taking Baron who ensnares herself in romantic liasons, but keeps focused to find the Seti I statue. Besides locating the life-size piece, she discovers an elaborate covert operation to smuggle priceless artifacts out of the Valley of the Kings, which she attempts to thwart by show more relying upon her academic conscience. The brilliant use of imagery and unforeseen "treasure map" details keeps the plot flowing. Although some information of the main character's movements are unnecessary to build characterization, the author generates a convincing story. Easily mistaken as a silly mummy fable of curse and consequence, rather the extraordinary novel provides a decent roadmap for the study of how to write a narrative that will grab a reading audience. show less

Not sure when or how I acquired this book, it's not the sort of thing I usually read. Perhaps I had hoped the Egyptian setting would be exotic or that it would be more mystery than thriller. I was surprised that a book from the 1980s would feel so dated. I liked the main character, an Egyptologist visiting Egyptian historical sites for the first time, most of the time, but any scenes with her boyfriend, who didn't respect her education at all, just got too annoying. Her attempts to solve the mystery of a statue of Seti I were usually more luck than research. I ended up skimming the last half.

3.25.

Erica Baron is a young Egyptologist, traveling through Egypt to fulfill a dream and to assert her independence. She becomes involved in a smuggling ring, meets an improbable number of strikingly handsome men, all of whom are predictably smitten with her and, ultimately, escapes with her life. This book reads like a wannabe romance. The main character's judgement is so questionable that it borders on feeble-mindedness. Not a bad read. Cooks is a solid writer of genre fiction but this is not one of his best.

All in all a intriguing adventure where I found myself devouring the final chapters in order to get to the bottom of a, though not so spotless, rather well-woven plot.

A mystery/thriller set in Egypt. A young female Egyptologist finds herself in the middle of a smuggling intrigue on her first trip to Egypt. As I was reading this, I had the feeling that I'd read it before, years ago, but it never quite came back to me. So, either I did and it wasn't that memorable, or it just felt like something else I'd read before. In any case, the twist at the end did take me by surprise (although I can't say I liked it). In general, the book was rather dated. There are some sexist issues, for example, which were addressed (a woman Egyptologist???), but not in a particularly satisfactory way. I don't want to say too much or it would be spoilery. It was a decent read, but not spectacular in any way.

a good easy read that keeps you interested. Cook develops his characters so you have a good understanding of them. When i was done it had me wanting to visit the area.