Pharaoh: A Novel by Valerio Massimo Manfredi (MacMillan)

Pharaoh is a strange mix of archaeology, thriller and terrorism action novel.

Professor William Blake finds himself without a job, without a wife and nearly freezing to death.

Out of the blue he’s offered a mysterious job in the Middle East to uncover a tomb.

At the same time Manfredi introduces a terrorist mastermind and the head of Mossad who’s also somehow linked to the excavation Blake is heading to.

Tossed into the mix is the identity of the body in the tomb – sure to sake the foundations of Western civilisation as we know it – and a sexy engineer who could also be a spy.

The plot jumps around a lot and there is some confusion over who’s up to what.

It is this lack of symmetry that gives the plot its irritating quality.

Unfortunately the central character William Blake is not particularly likeable, the connections are all too stretched and the multiple plots are too tangled.

All of this is a shame. It’s as though Manfredi felt that he’d only ever get one book deal so he mixed all his best ideas together to get maximum exposure.

Pharaoh would have benefited from tighter editing and the elimination of some of the plot lines.

However, the action scenes are tightly written and there are some great ideas.

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