The Exodus Quest-Will Adams

The Exodus Quest
Will Adams
Grand Central, Apr 29 2010, $24.99
ISBN: 9780446563208

In Alexandria, Egypt Archeologist Daniel Knox walks in a local market place when he notices what appears to be an ancient earthenware bowl. The teenage vendor insists the artifact was given to him by his friend Daniel Knox and once belonged to Alexander the Great. He is amused by the hawker as everyone claims to be his buddy since The Alexander Cipher case. The lad sets prices based on pure supply and demand of how much he perceives the customer can afford, but refuses to reveal where it was found.

Knox visits his friend Omar Tawfiq who lets him browse through his database. He finds a picture of it, but Omar explains it is not a bowl from Ancient Egypt; instead it is a storage jar lid from Qumran, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Soon that lead takes the excited Knox to a dig led by Reverend Ernest Peterson and his team of theological students who seek a portrait of Christ that Peterson plans to keep. As a murder of a native archeologist occurs, corrupt cops blame Knox while the beleaguered Egyptologist learns in horror from his cell that his partner Gaille Bonnard was abducted near the ruins of Amarna, several hundred miles away.

With a strong ancient historical base, the latest Knox antiquities thriller is a fast-paced over the top of the Sphinx entertaining tale. Readers will enjoy the hero’s hyperactive adventures in which he is a guest of the state, but needs to be in three other places at the same time. First he must rescue himself by proving his innocence, which is difficult to do when you’re in a cell; so that he can second rescue Gaille; and third rescue the artifacts being devastated unmercifully by the Reverend. No caffeine for Knox.

Harriet Klausner