The Labyrinth of Osiris, by Paul Sussman, is a surprisingly well written book about life in Israel and Egypt today, not yesteryear. But it does begin with a short introduction to the time when the British Egyptologists discovered great tombs. The introduction to this novel is very misleading. It would appear that a crime has been committed years ago during the British expeditions. However, this introduction is very important to the developments in finding a lost gold mine which is rediscovered in the need to solve a modern day crime.
A very much disliked and feared female journalist has been found strangled to death in the Armenian quarter in an Armenian Cathedral. The author uses a variety of writing styles in which we are in the mind of the murderer as he suffers through his ordeal of killing the journalist, and then takes us into the minds and thoughts of the detectives who are bent upon discovering the identity of the murderer. In addition to that, we jump from one city to another while we meet another detective who is solicited by Arieh Ben Roi, the Israeli detective to help him in this problem. We jump from simple case after simple case, later to find that all are intertwined in a way that neatly fits together to make sense of a variety of seemingly separate and disconnected situations. However, in the end, they all fit together to make one simple picture.
There is the case of the Coptic Christians who believe that bias and prejudice from neighbors is causing their wells to become poisoned but the neighbors deny any involvement in the death of animals and vegetation due to the poisoned water. The journalist appears to have been tracking the cause of young girls being kidnapped and shipped from country to country as sex slaves, some so young as to be pitiable. This takes us on a journey through the red light districts of Jerusalem where we meet the whores and pimps who savage young girls. One girl seems to be especially important to the case so that the detectives search for her to gain information. The Armenian priest of the Church is falsely accused of the murder but is instrumental in helping to locate the missing girl who is necessary to solving the riddle. The British archaeologist and Egyptologist is significant in that he has found a lost gold mine and has drawn a map of it, unbeknownst to any but the supposed victim of a crime which he had been accused. The gold mine is located in the Eastern Desert of Egypt where it has lain for years undiscovered and unknown until recent times. Khifali, the Egyptian policeman, has recognized the relationship between the possibility of the poisoning of the wells to be caused by the gold mine so that he is driven to find it. In America, Houston, Texas, to be exact, the owner of the Barren Company, boasts that he owns more businesses worldwide than anyone on the planet, and is about to open a museum in Luxor, Egypt, the home base for Khifali, our Egyptian policeman. So the story shifts from Jerusalem, seat of the original crime, to Luxor, Egypt, and to Houston, Texas, home of Barren Company. The son is a seemingly worthless drug abuser and womanizer, a corrupt kind of vile contemptible creature who his father loathes. His sister, Rachel, has mysteriously disappeared and is nowhere to be seen until she emerges as a part of a group called The Nemesis Agenda, whose mission is to destroy enemies they deem unworthy and guilty of crimes committed against society in the name of capitalism. All these characters eventually come together in a variety of ways that keeps the reader engrossed and involved. Somehow, it never falls apart, but slowly joins to make tons of sense, and at last, our crime is solved for the reader, but never for the public at large. Disappointingly, the law is always outwitted and outplayed by the meaner, nastier guilty who have no compunction about violating codes of law, whether murder, kidnapping, child molestation, or hatred due to bias and prejudice on race and religious grounds. It is a nasty story in which the real world wakes to know that money talks, powerful people rule, and there is nothing that the ordinary joe can do about it.
However, hope is in the world of the free press...if a story is sensational enough, if the press is willing, and bold enough, truth can win out...
The book does end both happily and unhappily...won't be a spoiler, but it is not a quick wrap up with everything ending hunky dory...it ends...with a bit of hope. Some of the bad guys do get their due...but it has twists and turns that make one think...there must be a lot of truth in all of this somewhere, which is one reason I like it and recommend it...
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