City of the Horizon (Huy the Scribe Egyptian Mystery, #1)

Egypt during the 18th Dynasty, about 1350 B.C. Akhenaten, the reformist pharaoh, has died, and his successor, the child pharaoh Tutankhamun, is effectively controlled by political schemers with no love for Akhenaten's old supporters. Many of these have lost their lives, but Huy, once a scribe in Akhenaten's court, is luckier: He's lost merely his home and the right to practice his trade. In desperation, Huy becomes a sort of traveling troubleshooter, the world's first private eye. In this, his first case, he is up against Egypt's powerful priesthood and a brutal gang of tomb-robbers, all while trying to evade the clutches of the secret police. Palace intrigues, the deaths of one-time royal favorites ... it may sound like Tudor England, but it's Egypt during the 18th Dynasty, about 1350 B.C. Akhenaten, the "reformist" pharaoh, has died, and his successor, the child pharaoh Tutankhamun, is effectively controlled by political schemers with no love for Akhenaten's old supporters, now deemed heretics. Many of these have lost their lives, but Huy, once a scribe in Akhnaten's court, is luckier: he's lost merely his home and the right to practice his trade. In desperation, Huy becomes a sort of traveling troubleshooter, the world's first private eye. "City of the Horizon" marks his first case, bringing him up against both Egypt's powerful priesthood and a brutal gang of tomb-robbers, all while he's trying to evade the clutches of the secret police. The modern world, it seems, has no monopoly on duplicity and corruption