Title:

Death of an Eye

Author:

Dana Stabenow

Category:

Mystery / Thriller

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

March 26, 2025

eath of an Eye is the first book in a mystery series set in ancient Egypt. Cleopatra sits on the throne of Egypt, but Egypt is a vassal state; Julius Caesar and his legions conquered Egypt and now the ancient kingdom is a client state in the Roman empire. Indeed, Cleopatra is heavily pregnant with Caesar's child. Although Rome is the ultimate authority, Cleopatra is still the ruler of Egypt. She has concocted a scheme to release new currency into the struggling economy - Egypt does not have enough coins to allow for the exchange of goods, and a barter economy is too inefficient to grow trade. (This is a surprisingly modern thought about how economies work, but it is true that for most of its time as an empire Egypt had a barter economy, it did not introduce coins into circulation until 500 B. C. ). However, the shipment of new coinage (it was secretly minted on Cyprus because of abundance of bronze on that island) was stolen when the ship docked at Alexandria. Someone with inside information got wind of this highly secret coin shipment and concocted a clever and successful operation to steal the money. But who?

Tetisheri is young and beautiful - she is the daughter of a wealthy and successful merchant Nebenteru. Tetisheri is also a close confidant of Cleopatra. Summoned to the Queen's chambers, Tetisheri learns of the stolen coins. She also learns that Khemit, an old woman who worked as a weaver, was actually the Queen's Eye - the secretive official who represents Cleopatra; orders from the Queen's Eye must be obeyed by all Egyptians as if Cleopatra herself had issued them. But Khemit was just found murdered, her skull bashed in by a heavy blow. The sigil that Khemit carried to prove she was the Queen's Eye was left on her body, proving that the attack was not an ordinary robbery gone awry - no thief would have left such a valuable ornament behind.

Cleopatra asks Tetisheri to investigate. Tetisheri is given the Queen's Eye - she must assume the dangerous role of being the Queen's eyes and brains as she attempts to track down the theft of the coinage. Assisting her is hunky Apollodorus, a powerful warrior who serves as one of the elite Five Soldiers that act as Cleopatra's personal body guards.

There are a lot of suspects for Tetisheri to investigate. In fact, there is a huge cast of characters in this short novel. Fortunately, Stabenow provides a Cast of Characters at the beginning of the book - the list contains forty-nine names! I found myself flipping back to those pages frequently as I tried to remember who all the actors were. I know Death of an Eye is the first book in a series, but perhaps Stabenow didn't need to introduce all these characters in the first book. (There is also a map of the Mediterranean Sea and the cities controlled by Rome on the first few pages of the book, this also proved to be helpful understanding some of the references.)

Tetisheri asks some questions, and naturally this draws the attention of some individuals who would prefer that such questions are never asked. Fortunately, Apollodorous proves to be adept with his weapons and Tetisheri survives some narrow escapes. Tetisheri and Apollodorous provide a glimmer of romance to the story.

I was underwhelmed by the resolution of who committed the crime and why. Tetisheri does figure who the stole the coinage, and who was the culprit that murdered Khemit, the previous Eye of the Queen. The mystery did not seem to require clever deductive reasoning, it almost seemed like powerful people wanted her to come to the right conclusion and guided her moves. Maybe the next book will be better (there are currently four in the series), now that the characters and setting have been established. Using ancient Egypt as the setting for the series is a nice change from the typical setting in Britain, I have probably read at least one book from ten different mystery series set in different eras of English history. It is quite a murderous island!