Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Fiction review: The Alexander Cipher

Courier Mail

Fiction - The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams. I couldn't find an author name for the review.

In the vein of the The Da Vinci Code, with desperate searches for ancient artefacts and murderous villains (but without the heavily religious and cultish overtones), The Alexander Cipher opens with a scene from the Libyan desert in 318BC.

It's a brief prologue in the distant past, only a few pages, then the action takes up in modern-day Egypt, where we meet Daniel Knox, whom Adams fashions as a likeably reluctant hero, a British archeologist who at the outset finds himself in life-threatening strife while defending the honour of a damsel in distress (think Indiana Jones).

Knox is an Egyptologist and archeological diver who, after he saves the aforementioned damsel from being raped by the wicked shipping magnate Hassan, spends most of the book on the run from Hassan's goons.

But this is not where the main action is. Knox has a fascination for Alexander the Great – the greatest warrior king of all time – and most of the other characters in The Alexander Cipher feel a similar fascination.


See the above page for the entire review.

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