Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* With so many books following in the steps of The Da Vinci Code (ancient secrets! religious fervor! end of times!), it is sometimes difficult to differentiate one from the other. This one is a standout. It starts conventionally, with a prologue describing events in the first century C.E. The Temple in Jerusalem is being sacked by the Romans, but care is being taken to save the most precious artifact for the future. Switch to modern-day Cairo, where Khalifa, a policeman, investigates the unusual death of an old man, and to Jerusalem, where Layla, a Palestinian journalist, receives a mysterious letter in code. In another part of Jerusalem, Ben-Roi, a cop who lost the love of his life in a terrorist attack, tries to drink himself to death, but the events in Cairo intervene. Sussman does it all well here. The internecine plotting is superb, with true surprises right up to the last page, but he doesn't neglect characters for plot. All of the key players are keenly drawn, but especially the cops so different on the surface, a Jew and an Arab, yet scratch that surface, and you find two sides of the same coin. Moreover, Sussman goes well beyond straight thriller fare (and even further beyond the by-the-numbers Da Vinci Code imitations) with a clear-eyed, insightful look at the problems of the Middle East, where hope and despair continue to dance their lethal pas de deux. A compulsively good read with surprising depth.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A bestseller overseas, Sussman's follow-up to The Lost Army of the Cambyses opens at Jerusalem's Holy Temple in the year 70, jumps to doomed WWII German prison camp inmates dragging a Nazi-purloined holy relic down an abandoned coal shaft and then fast-forwards to present-day Egypt. There, Det. Insp. Yusef Ezz el-Din Khalifa of the Luxor police investigates the murder of an old man whose body has been found at an archeological site in the Valley of the Kings. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Palestinian journalist Layla al-Madani and Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi have their own sad histories and complicated lives to deal with. Eventually, Sussman twines all the threads into one, and the three principals are hard on the trail of the mysterious artifact hidden by the prisoners. There are familiar Da Vinci Code elements, but Sussman, an archeologist, puts in plenty of satisfying twists and turns, and grounds the story in the violence and intrigue of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Egyptian police detective Yusuf Khalifa returns in Sussman's second historically tinged thriller after The Lost Army of Cambyses. This time he's investigating a mysterious death that may be connected to a host of dark secrets from the past, including an old unsolved murder, Nazi treasure hunters, and the possible fate of a fabled treasure of the Jewish Temple, thought to have been lost since the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Meanwhile, two other investigators, an Israeli detective and a female Palestinian journalist, independently pursue related and converging investigations amid the tension and violence of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The historical nature of the investigation, the religious connections, and the convoluted conspiracies are reminiscent of The Da Vinci Code, but the author's pseudohistorical apparatus is less thoroughly worked out, limiting the book's cult potential. The story has enough energy and action to carry it past a few logical gaps, but the author's portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may strike some readers as unnecessarily provocative, and a supernaturally tinged coda to the story seems artificial and forced. An optional purchase for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/07.]-Bradley Scott, Brighton Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The search for a hidden treasure that will be either a blessing or a curse for the state of Israel reopens wounds from the Holocaust and threatens to worsen the state of Arab-Israeli relations, if such a thing is possible. This latest entry in the blast from the mysterious biblical past sweepstakes begins with the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD 70 and the last minute spiriting away of the Temple's greatest but mysterious and unrevealed treasure. After a side trip to the Austrian Alps as the Reich is collapsing, where SS troopers are hiding a Large Heavy Box with Unrevealed Contents in a remote salt mine (could there be a connection with the Temple Treasure?), Sussman (The Lost Army of Cambyses, 2003) sets the reader down in today's wretched Middle East for what seem to be unrelated stories in Jerusalem and Cairo, plot lines that will converge and lead--yes--to the Treasure. In Egypt, Inspector Yusuf Khalifa, an honest, hardworking detective with a strong background in archaeology who is nearly the only likable character to be introduced, takes on the case of apparently murdered Dutchman Piet Jansen. Khalifa quickly learns that Jansen was not murdered but was quite possibly the culprit 15 years earlier in Khalifa's first case as a policeman. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, attractive but ruthless Palestinian reporter Layla al-Madani has received an anonymous letter containing a sheet of medieval code that promises to put her in touch with al-Mulatham, a renegade Palestinian firebrand. While Layla follows the code to Cambridge and Languedoc (the tragic heretical Cathars pop up briefly), heartbroken Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi (a suicide bomber showed up at his wedding) nurses his rage against Palestinians, chugs vodka and follows his gut until he gets the phone call from Egypt that will start tying all the plot lines together. Clunky prose swaddles a frantic but unexceptional plot. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
