Barbara Rosenblat

Vicky Bliss, peerless art historian and sleuth, searches for solutions to more than one heinous offense in the ever-shifting sands of Egypt's mysterious Valley of the Kings. When her longtime significant other, John Tregarth, the suave and dangerously charming international art thief, is accused of taking a world-famous, one-of-a-kind historic relic, it is up to Bliss to clear his name.

Sir Henry is striving to ensure no tomb has been overlooked by the previous expedition. Scarcely have the men started working when their spades uncover a series of steps cut into the rock. Then Sir Henry is found stiff and stark in his bed. On his high brow, inscribed in what appears to be dried blood, is a crudely drawn uraeus serpent, the symbol of the divine pharaoh.