Sinai

Sinai
by William Smethurst
(4/5 stars)

When a German tourist dies of dehydration in the Sinai desert in only hours, Dr. Richard Corrigan begins to suspect something odd is going on.  He joins forces with an American scientist, who shows him the body of an Egyptian boy recovered in 1973 but believed to actually come from the time of the Biblical exodus.  Thus Richard begins to look for answers.

If you ever wanted a da Vinci Code involving physics then this is your book.  It's lacking a little in terms of chills and thrills, though it has its moments.  Mostly what holds this book back are the ancient Egyptian scenes.  These weigh the narrative down considerably and for what they contribute to the end, it could have been compressed into a prologue.  Really, we didn't need to hear the entire Exodus when all that mattered was what happened around Mount Te.

Another problem was the author clearly did not reference his military aircraft.  At one point he mentions an American Sabre going down; Sabres became obsolete by the mid-1950s.  Another point someone is flying in an SR-71 Blackbird; the last of those was retired in the 1990s.  Then he mentioned something being tested on a Phantom; I'm pretty sure the Israeli's stopped using those a while back as well.  In this age of Wikipedia it's pretty easy for an author or editor to research details like that.  And as I always say, if you don't get the little things right, it worries me about the big things, especially in a book that involves so much history.

Anyway, as I said if you liked the da Vinci Code and like physics then this will be a great book for you.

That is all.