I hadn't seen much new, lately, that was compelling and innovative, int eh crime fiction field:
but I recently finished The Museum Detective, by Maha Khan Phillips--which is a Pakistan-set archaeology thriller, not quite Indiana Jones but with mummies, counterfeit mummies, murder, corruption, a feminist perspective---apparently the first in a series.
Based on a true story (though the plot of the novel is entirely fictional), Phillips creates an accomplished archaeologist and feminist who stumbles across the discovery (by police rather than archaeologists) a mummy that will be a scandal either for all those involved in the discovery or for the field of archaeology. That is to say either this mummy is either a gruesome fake or a discovery that will create a seismic shift in ancient history as we know it.
Add to that a personal tragedy that might be connected to the discovery, the corru[t and criminal conspiracies revolving around the mummy, and the determination of the heroine to get to the bottom of the affair regardless of consequences for her, her familyu, and her colleagues--and the result is truly a distinctive p[age-turner in a genre all its own.
