Review of The Pharoah’s Forgery

From the publisher of Pharoah’s Forgery

After some of Karina Cardinal’s recent adventures—her lover Mike Finnegan would call them scrapes, jams, or pickles—she’s more than ready to blow this D.C. pop stand for a short girls’ trip to Mexico. Until Jillian’s roller skate wreck blows their plan out of the water. With Jilly injured and Mike working, her fellow lobbyist Rodrigo volunteers to share some sun, sand, and margaritas in Cancun. It’s tough to relax, though, knowing what’s in her suitcase. A package she promised to hand off to Mrs. Thundermuffin in Mexico. Mrs. T’s evasive maneuvers around Karina’s questions wave more red flags than a bullfighter, leaving Karina no choice but to take a peek. Okay, so it’s not a kilo of something illegal. It’s an Egyptian death mask that turns out to be a magnet for crooks, conmen, kidnappers, and outright killers. When the situation explodes into chaos, Karina and Rodrigo are lucky to have friends in the right place—at their backs. But they’re in one hell of a jam. And they could be going home in something tackier than a souvenir t-shirt—more like a body bag.

My review

I love it when a story begins with the main character doing something nice and it later comes back to bite them. In this case, the something nice was delivering a package for Karina’s neighbor. That favor kicked off a wild ride an adventure from beginning to (almost) the end. Unfortunately, the main story seemed to culminate about 3/4 of the way through. While this was really just a twist in the story and there was still some tension, it took a while for the pacing to ramp up again. With that one exception, this was a joy to read with mystery and mayhem at every turn. This one’s a clear winner for anyone who likes well-written action scenes, crisp dialogue, and plenty of twists.

Learn more about Ellen Butler at ellenbutler.net.

FTC Full Disclosure: A review copy of this book was provided by its publisher.