Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Missing Scarab
Columbkill Noonan
Genre: Mystery/Mythology
Publisher: Crooked Cat Books
Date of Publication: July 26, 2017
Number of pages: 273
Word Count: 84,467
Cover Artist: Adobe Stock/Lynea/Soqoqo
Tagline: Baker Street isn’t the only place in town
Book Description:
Barnabas Tew is a private detective struggling to make a go of it in Victorian London.
Fearing that he is not as clever as he had hoped to be, he is riddled with anxiety and plagued by a lack of confidence brought on in no small part by his failure to prevent the untimely deaths of several of his clients. Matters only get worse when Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, is referred to Barnabas by a former client (who perished in a terribly unfortunate incident which was almost certainly not Barnabas’ fault). Anubis sends for Barnabas (in a most uncivilized manner) and tells him that the scarab beetle in charge of rolling the sun across the sky every day has been kidnapped, and perhaps dismembered entirely.
The land of the dead is in chaos, which will soon spill over into the land of the living if Barnabas (together with his trusty assistant, Wilfred) cannot set matters to right.
Pulled from his safe and predictable (if unremarkable) life in Marylebone, Barnabas must match his wits against the capricious and dangerous Egyptian gods in order to unravel the mystery of the missing beetle and thereby save the world.
Excerpt:
“You see,” said
Anubis, “Khepre has gone missing. Are you familiar with Khepre?”
Barnabas shook
his head.
“Khepre is our
scarab beetle. He is responsible for rolling Ra across the sky every morning
and then down beneath the earth every night. Without Khepre the sun cannot
move. The sun will no longer rise and set as it should.”
“That is why it
is so hot in here?” ventured Barnabas, proud of his deductive skills. He had
noticed almost immediately how very bright the light was in this place and that
the air was intolerably stuffy.
“Exactly,” said
Anubis. “And if this continues for much longer, the heat and the constant daylight
will spill out onto the mortal world. There will be famine and death and chaos.
You can see that this must not happen.”
“Of course,”
agreed Barnabas. “That sounds perfectly dreadful.”
“Dreadful,
indeed,” said Anubis. “That is the task that I have for you. You must find
Khepre for us. The fate of the world depends upon it.”
About the Author:
Columbkill Noonan has an M.S. in Biology (she has, in turn, been a field biologist, an environmental compliance inspector, and a lecturer of Anatomy and Physiology).
When she's not teaching or writing, she can usually be found riding her rescue horse, Mittens, practicing yoga (on the ground, in an aerial silk, on a SUP board, and sometimes even on Mittens), or spending far too much time at the local organic, vegan market.
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