Egypt
Passionate About Pulp: Revisiting The Mummy (1999)
By Angie Barry
August 15, 2016THE SUBGENRE: Supernatural adventure. THE HEROES (WHO HAPPEN TO BE LOVE INTERESTS): Egyptologist Evelyn Carnahan and French Foreign Legion soldier-turned-convict Rick O'Connell. THE VILLAIN: Imhotep, high priest and murderous mummy. THE SETTING: 1920's Egypt. All her life, Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) has dreamed of exploring ancient tombs and proving her worth as a serious Egyptologist.…
My Time in Egypt: Inspiration for Shooting the Sphinx
By Avram Noble Ludwig
June 28, 2016Read this exclusive guest post from Avram Noble Ludwig, author of Shooting the Sphinx, about the difficulties and experiences he faced in Egypt that inspired the novel, and then, make sure you're signed in and comment for a chance to win a copy of the book! I first went to Egypt in 2005 to shoot a…
Shooting the Sphinx: New Excerpt
By Avram Noble Ludwig
June 25, 2016Shooting the Sphinx by Avram Noble Ludwig is a unique political thriller about an American filmmaker who becomes involved in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (Available June 28, 2016). In Hollywood, Ari Basher is the stuff of legends, the man who always gets the impossible-to-film shots. In Cairo, however, he faces the most difficult and dangerous…
Fresh Meat: Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vidal (writing as Cameron Kay)
By Clare Toohey
April 8, 2015Thieves Fall Out by Gore Vidal (writing as Cameron Kay) is a pulp novel, rediscovered after sixty years, about a broke American in post-WWII Cairo who gets involved in smuggling, intrigue, and revolution (available April 21, 2015). This novel comes with comparisons to Casablanca right on the back—oh, it's understandable if you didn't notice that…
Fresh Meat: The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer
By Court Haslett
March 18, 2014The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer is a contemporary novel of espionage and geopolitics, unraveling the dangerous relationships between a diplomat who's just been assassinated, his unfaithful wife, her ex-lover in Egyptian intelligence, and a CIA analyst (available March 18, 2014). Note: Read on to the end for a special audiobook excerpt from Chapter 1!…
Trick or Toast!: Occult Jam Made from Princess Diana’s Hair
By Crime HQ
October 3, 2013This is not a joke, but an actual, edible product created as surreal art by Bompas & Parr. The ingredients of their Occult Milk Jam are “milk, cream, caster sugar, Hendrick's Gin infused with a speck of Princess Diana's hair.” But if the thought of that is unsavory, they also made Absinthe & Pineapple Jam…
RIP, Elizabeth Peters, Barbara Michaels, and Dr. Barbara Mertz
By Crime HQ
August 9, 2013She earned a Ph.D. at 23 and had too much to say to be constrained under just one name. We're sad to share the news of the passing, at age 85, of a wonderful writer who became an MWA Grandmaster in 1998. From the Post-Tribune's obituary: Mertz wrote more than 35 mysteries under the name…
When Michael Crichton Was John Lange: 1968’s Easy Go aka The Last Tomb
By Brian Greene
July 19, 2013Easy Go is one of 10 early Michael Crichton novels being reissued as an e-book (available July 23, 2013). The prospect of wealth does strange things to people. That quote, from one of the characters in this 1968 novel, originally published as The Last Tomb, goes a long way toward summing up the overriding theme…
Ancient Crimes, Modern Detection
By Tony Hays
August 10, 2012The world is in love with methods of forensic crime detection. We have been entranced by CSI (the original) and every spin-off it has produced. Abby Sciuto and her mass spectrometer add immeasurably to the strength of the Navy-based NCIS series, not to mention the ubiquitous Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard and his scalpel and keen…