by Kathleen Kaska

Details at the end of this post on how to win a copy of The Egyptian Curse, along with a link to purchase the book.

You’re suspected of murder. Your alibi might be just a figment of your imagination–or so say the authorities. Another investigator appears to be interfering with you trying to prove your innocence. Your love interest and her brother, her father and two archeologists all have motives, but Scotland Yard stays focused on you. You’ve been in a pickle before, but a certain beekeeper has always saved your skin. So when another murder is committed and you, again, are the prime suspect, well even Sherlock Holmes may not be able to rescue you.

The Egyptian Curse, Dan Andriacco and Kieran McMullen’s third and final (say it ain’t so) Enoch Hale mystery, delivers a masterful plot with a thunderous twist at the end. When Lady Sara Barrington’s husband, Alfie Barrington, is stabbed to death outside his club, Inspector Rollins puts two and two together and points the finger at Enoch Hale and Lady Sara, his one-time love. Piece of cake for Rollins.

Opportunity: Lady Sara doesn’t have an alibi and it appears Hale’s alibi doesn’t exist. Motive: Get the husband out of the way and the two lovers can resume their relationship. Means: A missing dagger belonging to Lady Sara’s father. Hale and Lady Sara’s adamant pleading of their innocence falls on deaf ears. Then, to make matters worse, Rollins catches Hale in a damning lie.

True to form, Andriacco and Kieran pepper the story with colorful real-life folks– archeologist Howard Carter is another suspect, Leonard and Virginia Woolf fall under suspicion, and Hale’s confidant Tom (T. S. Elliot) lends Hale a hand. Father Ronald A Knox offers his opinion and a few righteous words of wisdom, and like in most of his movies, Alfred Hitchcock makes a cameo.

Who is the mysterious woman who can give Hale an alibi? For that, you’ll have to read the book.

Dan Andriacco discovered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories at about the age of nine. Not long after, he became acquainted with such greats of the Golden Age of detective fiction as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, John Dickson Carr, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many more.

He has been a member of the Tankerville Club, a Cincinnati-based scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars, since 1981. That connection is reflected in many ways in his book Baker Street Beat: An Eclectic Collection of Sherlockian Scribblings.

Andriacco’s Sebastian McCabe – Jeff Cody mysteries series, set in a small town in Ohio, is very much in the tradition of his Golden Age favorites.

Kieran McMullen discovered Holmes and Watson at an early age. His father, a university English professor, found his reading skills lacking and so the summer of his eighth year assigned him the task of reading the complete Doyle stories before school started again in September.

After a twenty-two-year career in the U.S. Army, twelve years in law enforcement and twenty years as a volunteer fireman, Kieran turned to writing about his favorite literary characters, Holmes and Watson. His first book, Watson’s Afghan Adventure, centers on Watson’s war experience before he met Holmes. His subsequent novels, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Boer Wagon and Sherlock Holmes and the Irish Rebels, relate the duo’s wartime experiences.

To enter to win a copy of The Egyptian Curse, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “Curse,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen July 25, 2015. U.S. residents only. If entering via email please include your mailing address, and if via comment please include your email address.

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Kathleen Kaska writes the Classic Mystery Triviography Series. ™ The Sherlock Holmes Triviography and Quiz Book was a finalist for the 2013 EPIC award in nonfiction. Kathleen also writes the award-winning Sydney Lockhart Mysteries. Her latest, Murder at the Driskill, features a twelve-year-old female Sherlock Holmes impersonator. When not writing or reading Holmes, Kathleen spends time traveling the country’s back roads, looking for new venues for her mysteries, and bird watching. Her passion for birds led to publication of her nonfiction book, The Man Who Saved the Whooping Crane: The Robert Porter Allen Story (University Press of Florida 2012). You can learn more on their website.