Despite what has become in action novels an ubiquitous reference to Occam’s Razor–that sometimes the simplest explanation is the best–this tale is smart and challenging with lots of detail on ancient Egypt, the treacherous Sudd setting, and enough discussion on near-death experiences to get me interested in that topic. This is an interesting tale with enough historic details to make readers of that genre deliriously happy. It doesn’t take Logan long to realize the excavation is cursed and only withdrawing–which Stone refuses to do–can they end their problems. Logan not only has made a career of studying oddities, but is an empath–a person who feels a person’s emotional history by simply touching them. What adds to the drama is that the site is located in the Sudd, a god-foresaken bogland south of the Egyptian border that the dig organizer calls Hell on Earth. When odd–read that ‘unnatural’–events begin to pepper the dig site, he calls in self-proclaimed enigmatologist (a specialist in enigmas) Jeremy Logan. This one is the resting place of none other than Narmer, the pharaoh who united Lower and Upper Egypt thousands of years ago. Sci Fi meets historic fiction in Lincoln Child’s newest novel, The Third Gate (Doubleday 2012) as world-renowned treasurer hunter Porter Stone sets his sites on what is considered the Holy Grail of Egyptology–a pharaoh’s grave.
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