Books

A body in teh Library lands Falco in teh spotlight

Alexandria

Falco series, book 19

My challenge here was to write a book set in ancient Egypt that would have no pharaohs, few pyramids, no respect for sacred cats, hardly any details of mummification rites, no duck hunts on the Nile, no peasants, no shadoufs and no Archimedes’ screws.

Mission accomplished: Falco, Helena and their immediate family, including Aulus, go to Roman Egypt to see more of the Seven Wonders of the World. Uncle Fulvius and Cassius, later joined by Pa, are up to some pensioners’ scam, getting in the way, while Falco looks into high academic culture at the Great Library. This is home to all the knowledge of the world – though when the corpses start appearing in the customary odd circumstances, it takes more than great minds to understand Who Did It. The academic world festers while management dithers, diplomats dose, undertakers fib and businessmen diddle. The Pharos is shrouded in mist and the Pyramids lost in a sandstorm. A sinister wind blows up out of the desert, adding to the hot air even before the arsonist sets things alight. Fortunately a mad inventor is on hand – and Falco just happens to know how his most useful invention works…

This is the one with the crocodile.

Reader Favourite

‘I told Heron that when he tired of academic life, there would be a job for him as an informer. The great man had the courtesy to say he did not have the brains for it.’
Chosen by Laura Fry