In 523 BC, the Persian pharaoh Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Dune Sea his army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and lost forever. Two and a half millennia later a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antique dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and a British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
The incidents appear unconnected, but Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police is suspicious, as is the archaeologist's...

Freya Hannan arrives in Egypt for the funeral of her elder sister Alex, a desert explorer who has lived in the Middle East for the past fifteen years. Recently diagnosed with a degenerative neurological condition, Alex has taken her own life. Freya is met at Luxor Airport by a colleague of her sister s, who drives her the 515 kms to Dakhla Oasis where Alex lived. Only one other non-Egyptian is present at the funeral: Professor Flinders Flin Brodie, 45 - tall, rugged, handsome - a world authority on pre-dynastic Egypt. The funeral over, Freya spends the next few days sorting through her sister...