The Lost Army of Cambyses

Book excerpt: From the international bestselling author—a “cinematic, rip-roaring adventure mystery” about Egypt’s ancient past and a race for priceless treasure (Booklist). In 523 BC, the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt’s desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa—only for the entire force to be overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever. Two and a half millennia later, a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor; an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo; and a British archaeologist is found dead at an ancient necropolis of Saqqara. The incidents appear unconnected, but Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police is suspicious. And so is the archaeologist’s daughter, Tara Mullray. Following a trail of clues from both the past and the present, they enter a labyrinth of intrigue, violence, and betrayal. Their desperate search for the truth could lead them to the same fate as Cambyses’s long-lost army . . . In this “textured, well-researched and expertly paced debut” (Publishers Weekly) with “a plot as complex as a hall of mirrors, and almost as gripping as a death threat” (Kirkus Reviews), bestselling author and real-life archaeologist Paul Sussman made his explosive entrance into the thriller field.