Review: The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips

The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips

Blurb from Goodreads:

When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz—a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz’s disappearance and distracts herself through a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, she is one of the country’s leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman.

But there is no news of Mahnaz. Instead, Gul is summoned to a narcotics investigation in a remote desert region in western Pakistan. In her wildest dreams, Gul couldn’t have imagined what she’d find amid a drug bust gone wrong, there is a mummy—life-size, seemingly authentic, its sarcophagus decorated with symbols from Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The discovery confounds everyone. It is both too good to be true, and for Gul, too precious to leave in careless or corrupt hands.

Aided by her team of unlikely misfits, Gul will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it, even as her quest for the truth puts her in the throes of a dangerous conspiracy and threatens to collide with her ongoing search for Mahnaz. A portrait of a city fueled by corruption and a woman relentlessly in pursuit of justice, The Museum Detective is an exciting, gritty new crime thriller that announces a whip-smart and brilliant sleuth and builds to a stunning, emotional conclusion that readers won’t soon forget.

My Review:

I really hope this becomes a series -- Gul was such an interesting character and provided a perspective that was unique.  I love love loved the premise and setting of this book.  Definitely an exciting read.  Give it a try!!

The Museum Detective comes out next week on April 1, 2025, and you can purchase HERE!  

Both Hamza and Rana looked stunned, their eyes barely leaving the mummy. Gul could hardly blame them. This was the most exciting thing that would probably ever happen in any of their careers. This was it, the moment every archaeologist would die to have. To be the first, to discover something new, to change the way history was viewed. Hamza and Rana had already done more in their fields than she could have ever hoped for, producing stunning research and presenting their work internationally. They were building a name for themselves, and yet, nothing could have prepared them for this.