Semerket is an embarrassment to his family, and his ex-wife. Drunk and disorderly, he can often be found shouting outside the house of his former wife's new husband or passed out in a bar. When an elderly priestess is murdered, he seems an ideal person to choose to solve the murder, or rather not to solve it. Somebody doesn't want the murderer revealed, but Semerket is determined to get to the bottom of it all whatever the cost.

Although it sags in the middle a bit with the usual sequence involving the investigator wandering about a lot and not learning anything new, this is an entertaining tale. Ancient Egypt springs to vibrant life and for once is not shown to be perfect, but very warts-and-all. The Egyptians are not a wantonly cruel people, but punishments for transgressions are harsh, and some of their ways are depicted as being suitably strange.

In keeping with the tone of the book, there are many supernatural happenings that might put some readers off as they cannot all be explained away, but as in Jacq's books this tends to add to the ambience. It is a time that believed in magic, so there is magic. I felt that this was preferable to anachronisms, of which this book seems mercifully almost free. My main real criticism is that the author needs to bring more to the series that is just his own, something that only his books have in them. I kept thinking that this novel did seem to be a distillation of the two authors mentioned earlier, but it is only a first book. I will be reading the next book in the series to see what develops.