THREE MORE NOVELS ON ANCIENT EGYPTIAN CRIMES

Death Comes as the End Agatha Christie (1944)

Not all of the queen of crime’s fiction was set in the 20th century. Her second husband was an archaeologist, and she had a deep interest in the past. In Death Comes as the End, Christie deployed the skills she had developed writing about Poirot and Miss Marple in a story from ancient Thebes. After mortuary priest Imhotep introduces a new concubine into his troubled household, a series of murders occurs.

Murder in the Place of Anubis Lynda S Robinson (1994)

A US writer of both crime fiction and romances, Lynda S Robinson is best known for a sequence of enjoyable historical whodunnits featuring Lord Meren, the ‘eyes and ears’ of the boy-king Tutankhamun. In the first book of the series, Meren is ordered to look into the death of the scribe Hormin, found murdered in the sacred Place of Anubis. Hormin was a man with many enemies and Meren’s task proves a difficult one.

Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead Nick Drake (2006)

This is the first in a trilogy of books about Rahotep, a so-called ‘Seeker of Mysteries’ in the police force of Thebes in the 14th century BC. Rahotep is commissioned by the enigmatic pharaoh Akhenaten to discover the whereabouts of his queen, Nefertiti, who has gone missing days before an important festival. If he succeeds, Rahotep wins the pharaoh’s favour; if he fails, he forfeits his life.