THE EGYPTOLOGIST

THE EGYPTOLOGIST is a novel told in diaries and letters written by unreliable characters. Ralph Trilipush is an English academic on the hunt for King Atum-hadu's tomb, based on clues gleaned from a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. Ferrell is an Australian detective searching the globe to locate an heir and solve a murder or two. The multicast performance is excellent. Simon Prebble adeptly voices the deluded Trilipush as he expresses himself in his diary and through letters to his fiancée, Margaret. Margaret's letters to Trilipush are read with a slight quaver, suggesting her fragility, neediness, and opium addiction. The detective is so cocksure of himself that you know he has to be wrong about almost everything. Phillips's narrators may be notoriously unreliable, but these readers are uniformly excellent. A.B. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 05]