Detectives Flinders Petrie and Thomas Pettigrew are now famous after their last case to find Cleopatra’s tomb. Years later, they are contacted by the curator of the British Museum to locate a statue of Aphrodite that was stolen. Following the trail will lead them to the deserts of Syria and its Bedouin people. They discover that The Stolen Goddess is in the hands of the Veiled One, a mysterious figure who lives only to seek his revenge on the sultan, and his second in command, known only as the Bulbul Pasha, who’s thirst for blood is only matched by his giant stature. Petrie and Pettigrew will meet T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell along the way, who offer their assistance in the matter. They discover the only way they can get the statue is to go undercover as belly dancers to entertain the Veiled One’s harem. What follows will be a battle to remember as the Bulbul Pasha offers a fight to the death in order to retrieve the statue. Only time will tell if Petrie and Pettigrew’s past experiences will help them to survive another life and death adventure in the pursuit of antiquities. ||I think the author really had something here with the overall idea, but the delivery fell a bit flat. It was very clear from early on that you need to read the first book in order to make sense of this one, but it isn’t labeled as a series, so you wouldn’t know that just by picking it up. It felt like the author used too many quotes and characters from other fiction; it felt like very little was actually original. The dialogue was very choppy and the random thoughts, from Pettigrew I guess, made it disjointed and hard to follow. It felt like I read two hundred pages and nothing much happened. Tons of pages of dialogue and then a sentence or two and they magically solved the case and are on their way home. There was no depth to the plot or the characters. If you are interested in this time period, I would definitely recommend sticking with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. It’s possible if you read Amos’ first book, that you would like this one, but I can’t imagine that it was any better. I think there is possibility here, but a lot more work needs to be done for this story to be more fleshed out. Until then, you might want to pick up something else.