Maxim Chatham The Cairo Diary

The Cairo Diary

Maxim Chatham

St. Martin's, Jun 2007, $24.95

ISBN: 9780312360993

In 2005 the French DST (secret police) move Marian from Paris to Mont-Saint-Michel on the west coast in order to keep her safe. To somewhat ease the ennui, she visits the library at Avranches. There she finds a journal written by Cairo Police Detective Jeremy Matheson in 1928.

Cairo 1928: Several young children vanished in thin air; they were later found dead at the tombs; all were horrifically mutilated. The head investigator Egyptian Inspector Azim el-Dayim believes the killer is a ghoul, a mythical inhuman monster. British expatriate Jeremy believes the wealthy husband of his former lover is the culprit. As the city panics over this giant serial killer, Marian believes the diary is real and that someone objects to her having it; she receives threatening notes to return what is not hers as she tries to solve the mystery of an almost eight decade old Egyptian serial killer.

Though Marian is looking back via the diary, readers will feel the atmosphere filled with tension of 1928 Cairo when Egypt was an English protectorate. The story line moves effortlessly between the two eras as Marian who has caused some sort of highest level scandal in Paris finds she is caught up in the intrigue of the historical murder investigation and pondering who in the present wants her to return what she assumes is the diary. With a slick touch of having the diary inside a Poe tale, mystery fans will appreciate THE CAIRO DIARY as the audience like the heroine will ponder the maxim truth is in the eye of the beholder as "what is truth at the end of the day" or tale.

Harriet Klausner