Nefertiti

NEFERTITI

A MISSING QUEEN. A DARK GAME OF POWER.

With her husband, Akhenaten, Nefertiti - the most powerful, charismatic and beautiful Queen of the ancient world - rules over an Empire at the peak of its glory and domination.

Together, they have built a magnificent new city in the desert on the banks of the Nile and are about to host kings, dignitaries and leaders from around the Empire for a vast festival to celebrate their triumph.

But suddenly, Nefertiti vanishes.

Rahotep - the youngest chief detective of the Thebes division- can see patterns where others cannot. His unusual talents earn him a summons to the royal court.

With ten days to find the Queen and return her in time for the festival, Rahotep knows that success will bring glory - but if he fails, he and his young family will die...

Αbout the author

Nick Drake was born in 1961. He lives and works in London. His first book-length collection, The Man in the White Suit (Bloodaxe Books, 1999), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1999, and was selected for the Next Generation Poets promotion in 2004. From The Word Go was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2007. His most recent projects include a stage adaptation of Philippe Petit’s To Reach the Cloud; the screenplay for the Australian film Romulus, My Father, starring Eric Bana, which won Best Film at the Australian Film Awards; Success, a play for the National Theatre's Connections project; and a trilogy of historical novels (Nefertiti, shortlisted for CWA Best Historical Crime Novel, Tutankhamun and Egypt: The Book of Chaos which Mammoth Screen are developing for TV). He is a screenwriter, and is also working the composer Tansy Davies and director Deborah Warner on an opera for ENO. In September 2010 he was invited to join Cape Farewell's trip to the Arctic to explore climate change, and from that journey arose a commission from United Visual Artists to create poems and texts for their ground-breaking installation High Arctic at the National Maritime Museum (2011). Those poems, together with others inspired by the Arctic and its voices, are gathered in his collection The Farewell Glacier (Bloodaxe Books, 2012). 

My Review

I love detective stories and I have a deep fascination with Ancient Egypt. This book combines the best of both worlds as amazingly we have an Ancient Egyptian detective investigating a missing person, none other than Nefertiti, ruler of Egypt. Rahotep is rather like Hercule Poirot going back in time, as I definitely feel Agatha's Christie's influence as well as that of one of my favourite writers, Christian Jacq. It is incredibly difficult to find the culprit when there are no forensics. All Rahotep has is his wit otherwise, he and all his family, will be put to death. The book is entertaining, educational and a pleasure to read. I'm really looking forward to reading Nick Drake's next book, Tutankhamun.