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British sensibilities and the romantic longings of English and Middle Eastern literature permeate this action-adventure mystery thriller as detectives Flinders Petrie and Thomas Pettigrew seek to find excitement in their lives once again. Penned by an American scholar and lawyer, the novel draws upon his life experiences that range from the California coast to various Middle Eastern nations. This title is the latest in a series that riffs upon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In fact, detectives Petrie and Pettigrew also live in a flat on Baker Street in the pre-World War I era and aspire to compete with and emulate their two successful but beleaguered heroes while running a more modern international detective agency.
Now close to retirement, Petrie and Pettigrew consider how to spend their approaching pensioner years while reminiscing about their previous experiences with Holmes and Watson, their current friendship with Lawrence of Arabia, and their own celebrated sleuthing in Egypt. They consider writing a book or creating a film when. lo and behold, their months and years of quiet longing for adventure appear in the form of an emissary of the Patriarch of the Church of the East in Baghdad, perhaps even the Patriarch himself in disguise. Not only has a small casket with the bones of the Apostle Thomas been stolen, but two guards were viciously slain, leaving no witnesses. The ravaged crime scene was cleaned up and kept secret from worshippers for their protection as the Sayfo—a historic massacre and deportation of Assyrian Christians by Ottoman and Kurdish forces—began to rage through the region.
Instinctively, the detectives deduce that the crimes were perpetrated by their much-feared adversary, the Veiled One. Before Petrie and Pettigrew embark for the Middle East, they seek out the wisdom of a British intelligence officer (code name Divinius) working undercover at the Ashmolean Library at Oxford University: “What would be the result of the theft?” Flinders asked. Divinius frowned. “If the Veiled One can carry off Saint Thomas’ bones and display them as relics of a false religion, he could possibly destroy the remaining Christian Churches in the Middle East.” Armed with Divinius’ sage advice (and many colorful revelations about the secret library) and joined by one of Divinius’ employees—Gazelda Jones, a wacky Welsh witch with a bloodhound nose—Petrie and Pettigrew soon board a steamer at Southhampton, bound for Basrah.
Alongside the echoes of Sherlock Holmes mysteries and the adventures of Indiana Jones, there is much more to whet the appetites of both genre and literary readers. The lyrical prose and the story pacing are relaxed but thoughtful and erudite, reflecting the whims and characters of the protagonists. Discerning readers will enjoy the flow of thoughts and dialogue-rich scenes peppered with quotations drawn from various pieces of literature of the detectives’ day and of previous eras: the poetry of William Blake and Rumi, the work of novelists Jane Austen and W. Somerset Maugham, bits of Shakespeare’s plays, and later, references from Scheherazade’s tales of the Arabian Nights, as the story waxes ever more atmospheric and fabulist as the detectives and Gazelda search for their quarry in Iraq. While there is a clash of cultures in this tale, there is also a profound appreciation of the contributions to humanity by both the East and West. What the intrepid trio eventually experience in their search (and its aftermath) inextricably links their present with their pasts in unexpected and poignant ways.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review