Kittling: Books: The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips

First Line: Gul was dreaming of Mahnaz when her phone rang.

A call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police makes Dr. Gul Delani think that they've finally found her missing niece, Mahnaz, who's been gone three years. Delani, a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, is consumed by grief and buries herself in her work.

But there is no news of Mahnaz. As one of the country's leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, Delani has been summoned to a narcotics investigation in a remote Pakistani desert region. She can't believe what she finds: a mummy-- life-size, seemingly authentic, in a sarcophagus decorated with symbols from the ancient Achaemenid Empire in Persia.

The discovery is too good to be true and too precious to leave in the wrong hands. Delani will stop at nothing to get to the truth even as her work puts her in the middle of a dangerous conspiracy and even threatens to interfere with her search for Mahnaz.

Although I was fascinated by the archaeology and the history contained in The Museum Detective, it really wasn't my cup of tea. With the current political turmoil here and abroad, I find myself having little patience with the restrictive lifestyles of more traditional Muslim women, and that is what Dr. Gul Delani has dealt with most of her life. It's been tremendously difficult for her to work her way up into her position at the museum in Karachi. Moreover, I wondered why she was still so determined to find her niece and why her parents seemed eager to write the girl off.

The angst piled higher and higher as the story veered from archaeology and history to drugs, the illegal antiquities trade, corrupt police, and other people in power who couldn't be trusted. Perhaps if I had been in a different mood, I would've enjoyed this book more, but I didn't. I just couldn't warm to Delani or care about her search for her niece.

The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips

eISBN: 9781641296571

eBook, 337 pages

Amateur Sleuth, #1 Dr. Gul Delani

Rating: D+

Source: Net Galley