The Museum Detective
“Gul’s strengths are her education, her keen mind, and the loyalty of the people she’s allowed closest to her. Watch for how those bring her closer to solving the crimes, in true Agatha Christie style.”
This series debut from seasoned mystery author Maha Khan Phillips opens in Karachi, Pakistan, the 12th largest city in the world but one that’s rarely portrayed in American fiction. Dr. Gul Delani is an archaeologist struggling to do meaningful work and train a team in a culture where women’s power over their own lives is sharply limited. She’s already disappointed her family by not getting married—so she’s embraced the role of beloved aunt to her very bright niece Mahnaz.
Except Mahnaz has now been missing for three years, and it’s hard to hold onto hope that the missing teen hasn’t been killed somewhere, somehow. So when a very unexpected discovery brings a mummy of a young woman into Gul’s museum, and X-rays show the mummified person had multiple healed breaks in her pinkie finger, just as Mahnaz did, Gul can’t help dreading that if the mummy is a fake—all too likely!—the body inside the wrappings may be her niece.
Surrounded by jealous co-workers and dubious government employees, including some corrupt police officers, Gul also knows she’s likely to lose control of the mummy at any point. Its removal from the museum turns out to be violent, much more than an administrative power grab, and although it looks like a master criminal may be involved, she’s not backing off from trying to regain the precious artifact. When she’s seriously injured, is it family culture or something more sinister that steals several conscious days from her and puts her further behind in the search for the mummy, and perhaps, at last, answers about her missing niece?
Her workplace at Karachi’s museum isn’t going to help her much: “She’d been there over a year—to the shock of many of the old timers. Before she started, it had been the department’s firm rule that women were not allowed to take on any nonclerical roles.” Highly qualified and experienced from study and efforts in other countries, she’s determined to make her way on her own. “But that didn’t stop her colleagues from doing whatever they could to ‘encourage’ her to leave.”
Of course, Gul has her own secrets, and the secrecy may also be a factor in the teen vanishing. “She’d decided to leave Mahnaz alone, to give her space. And when she’d just about decided Mahnaz had had enough space, that she would force the issue, Mahnaz disappeared. . . . She needed closure. The body [in the mummy], whoever she was, was going to have to provide that closure.” To discover its identity, Gul will have to finally trust three people with her most painful regrets.
Phillips offers a smooth and well-paced style, with quick bursts of action, a steady stream of revelations about Karachi culture, and daring twists. This portrait of a woman determined to pursue her career despite the losses she’ll endure—as with her parents, “stuck in a time warp, a place where there was no room for the eccentricities of archaeology”—would be engrossing even without the deftly played crime plotting and chase scenes. Soho Press presents The Museum Detective as the start of a series, and the few strands left to tease readers suggest that there will be at least as much action in the books that follow.
It's no accident that Phillips offers a parallel rhythm to the great mysteries of Agatha Christie, too: Gul and Mahnaz, with their appreciation for other cultures, are also British mystery readers, nicknaming each other Jane (for Marple) and Agatha. That habit will be part of the clues that this museum archaeologist desperately follows. Gul’s strengths are her education, her keen mind, and the loyalty of the people she’s allowed closest to her. Watch for how those bring her closer to solving the crimes, in true Agatha Christie style.