HEART OF THE NILE

Victorian sleuths unwrap confounding clues in a mummy murder.

In 1893, British Museum volunteer Phillip Addison can barely contain his excitement when he’s asked to catalog a recently acquired female mummy. When the amateur Egyptologist examines his specimen, he makes an amazing discovery, which he rushes off to show the “one person he could trust.” Cut to the well-appointed offices of investigators Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn, where Elizabeth Addison tearfully recounts the details surrounding her husband’s disappearance. After the two men visit the museum’s mummy vault, their meeting with bookish Liam Grant, one of Barker’s regular informants, fleshes out some significant details. Grant is the person Addison trusted—the missing man gave him an apparently priceless ruby for safekeeping. Barker agrees to take the jewel, later identified as the Heart of the Nile, off Grant’s hands. Shortly thereafter, Addison is found floating in the Thames, stabbed to death. The deadly game is afoot, amiably narrated by junior partner Llewelyn, who plays Archie Goodwin to Barker’s more formal Nero Wolfe. Barker & Llewelyn’s 14th recorded case combines another authoritative tour of Victoriana with a deep dive into Egyptian lore and history, with remarkable tidbits woven seamlessly into the novel’s tapestry, including references or visits to Scotland Yard, the Tower of London, and Charing Cross Road and passing allusions to Dickens, Franz Liszt, and H. Rider Haggard’s popular novel Cleopatra.Barker even has his own version of the Baker Street Irregulars, called the Millwall Boys. An audacious shooting on the street underscores the urgent need to solve this baffling crime.

An engaging immersion in a colorful era, plus a mystery!