THE MURDER OF KING TUT: The Plot to Kill the Child King
James Patterson and Martin Dugard
Little, Brown and Company
Nonfiction Thriller
ISBN: 9780316034043
This book’s title may mislead readers who, not knowing James Patterson’s vast outpouring of detective fiction, expect a scholarly archaeological study of the circumstances surrounding the death of Tutankhamen, the Pharaoh popularly known as “King Tut.” THE MURDER OF KING TUT is no such thing. It is a shrewd blend of fact and fiction, an airy set of variations on an Egyptian theme, told in short chapters that whiz back and forth between 1300 BC, the 1920s and the present day.
Patterson and Martin Dugard are not shy about touting the amount of research they put into this concoction, but the reader who is not himself an Egyptologist will have to be on constant alert to distinguish fact from fiction. Did Tut really marry his own sister?
The basic historical framework is well known --- the attempt by Tut’s father Akhenaten to turn Egypt away from polytheism to the worship of a single god by building a new capital city dedicated to that god and far removed from Thebes, the ancient capital. Tutankhamen became Pharaoh as a child, ruled for only a decade or so and died under circumstances that Patterson and Dugard see as a murder plot spawned by Tut’s failure to produce a male heir to the throne. They finger three villains: Tut’s younger sister whom he married in an unsuccessful effort to produce the needed heir, a villainous general and an equally sneaky high-level “grand vizier.” There is a smattering of rather sanitized sex in the book and a satisfactory amount of blood and gore, delivered rather casually. A good many people end up being beheaded or with their throats cut, as was evidently the ancient Egyptian custom in matters of high state policy.
The authors tell their story in a series of tiny chapters --- 100 of them, plus prologue and epilogue in a book of 332 pages. The palace intrigue thread is counterpointed by the story of Howard Carter, the English Egyptologist who uncovered the tomb. Carter left a detailed narrative of his work, from which Patterson and Dugard quote liberally. They have, however, gone well beyond Carter’s own account, embroidering and elaborating the story with invented scenes and picturesque stage-setting. I was reminded while reading of an Abraham Lincoln exhibit I once attended in which a pair of eyeglasses was displayed with this caption: “Lincoln seldom wore glasses, but if he had, they might have looked something like these.”
My guess is that Patterson did the writing while Dugard served mainly as researcher. The book reads easily as the brief chapters glide by --- a bag of literary popcorn. The writing style is breezily modern. Patterson, clever fellow, even manages to work in a plug for himself, quoting Time Magazine’s description: “the man who can’t miss.”
On the day I read this book, it was announced that James Patterson has signed a deal with his publisher for 17 new books, and early in this one he reports that in his study there lay manuscripts of 24 books lying around in various unfinished states. To call this man prolific would be like describing Babe Ruth as a baseball player.
This latest book in that literary tidal wave may be described as a kind of historically based entertainment. One doubts that the question of how and why Tutankhamen died figures on anybody’s list of top priority concerns these days, but Patterson and Dugard have turned it into a pleasant afternoon’s escapist diversion. It may melt away quickly in the mind and memory, but, like popcorn, it leaves a distinctive aftertaste.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
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