Reviews for The Pharaoh Key
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Doomed by a fatal illness, Gideon Crew embarks on one wild, series-ending adventure (Beyond the Ice Limit, 2016, etc.).Crew has AVM, a brain malformation that will kill him in about two months, although he'll feel fine until his sudden death. He and his engineer colleague Manuel Garza lose their jobs with no warning when their employer, Effective Engineering Solutions, suddenly stops paying them and shuts down without a word of explanation. While they're cleaning out their desks, they discover that a computer in the office has just finished a calculation that it's been working on for 43,000 hoursalmost five years. Garza sticks a USB drive in the computer and downloads the information, which is about a secret project to decipher the ancient Phaistos Disk. Garza proposes that they find whatever treasure it may lead to and sell it "for the most dough we possibly can," no matter what it turns out to be, even if it's a "fucking centerfold of the Mona Lisa." So they trek to the desolate Hala'ib Triangle in southeastern Egypt, a journey involving one blasted thing after another. They ride an ancient ferry that sinks on the Red Sea, drowning hundreds. A woman outbids Crew and Garza when they try to rent camels, their guide cheats them, and they nearly die of thirst in the desert, where they try to survive a haboob"the worst kind of dust storm"and find a "mist oasis." The pace never slackens as they get closer to the GPS coordinates they're looking for, and they have an encounter that changes everything. Crew's legerdemain and Garza's nifty engineering skills get them out of serious jams but may not save them from the one-eyed leopard or the fearsome warrior who is determined to fight Garza to the death. Through all of this, Crew faces the ultimate clock, the one ticking inside his brain. This is a cleverly plotted yarn with some laugh-out-loud twists, the best ones involving Garza's bravery and ingenuity. There are numerous references to earlier books in the series, and fans might like to read Beyond the Ice Limit first. Still, this book stands alone just fine.When the end of a book with a dying hero makes the reader laugh, that's a neat trick. This is a great cap on the series. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
The entertaining fifth Gideon Crew novel from bestsellers Preston and Child (after 2016's Beyond the Ice Limit) takes professional thief Gideon and his courageous sidekick, Manuel Garza, from New York City-where their employer, Effective Engineering Solutions, has suddenly ceased operations-to Egypt in search of a treasure that was the object of EES's last, unfinished case. Before their departure, Gideon and Manuel make a final visit to EES's Manhattan office, where they surreptitiously download a picture of the ancient Phaistos Disk; they soon succeed in breaking the code inscribed on the disk and revealing the treasure's exact location in the Hala'ib Triangle. In the course of their quest, Gideon and Garza escape from a sinking ship on the Red Sea, join forces with an attractive British geologist named Imogen Blackburn, and discover a lost civilization in a remote valley. The authors keep the tone light and the reader guessing right up to the open ending, which leaves some major plot points unresolved. Fans of the Indiana Jones movies will find plenty to like. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Here's the bad news: Gideon Crew, the adventurer-hero of four previous novels by the Preston-Child writing team, has been given only months to live. It looks like illness will do what numerous adversaries have failed to accomplish. But, first, Gideon has one last adventure to complete. Manuel Garza, a friend and colleague, asks Gideon to help solve a mystery and, just maybe, find an ancient treasure. This is an entertaining and suspenseful thriller from a team that specializes in exciting and suspenseful (they're perhaps better known as the authors of the Special Agent Pendergast series); the writing is fluid, the story is appropriately labyrinthine, and the Gideon-Garza interplay may remind some of the Hope-Crosby Road movies. Although the press material accompanying the galley says it's the fifth and final Gideon Crew novel, the ending leaves plenty of room for further adventures. So here's hopin'.--David Pitt Copyright 2018 Booklist
