Mon, Mar 03, 2003

: Sphinx

Author: Robin Cook

Pretty good book, but I’d recommend the condensed edition if you can find it. It’s overlong, and the “mystery” of Sphinx which taunts you the entire time turns out to be rather obvious and is somewhat of a letdown. Because so much of the plot is dependent on that secret, once that’s discovered, the book just ends. I’d have preferred to read more about the aftermath, which promised to be interesting, but of course that wasn’t the focus of the novel. The story deals with the black market of Egyptian artifacts. A young, beautiful woman (why are all Cook’s main characters so physically perfect?) just out of college with a degree in Egyptology, arrives in Cairo for her first visit. She’s immediately swept into the dark underworld of the black market, witnessing two murders in two days. Before it vanishes, she sees a priceless gold statue of Seti I, a remarkable piece that the scientific community has never seen. Where did come from? Risking her own life, she searches for the answers, and the handsome men she meets who want to help her are not what they seem. I liked the woman, and she does a good (realistic) job of tracking down clues, but the pace of the book is slow, the hidden “secret” annoyingly saved for the final pages, and some of the Egyptian research is dry academic stuff.

Topic: [/book]

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