Arthur Phillips

Oxford-educated Egyptologist Ralph Trilipush is digging himself into trouble, having staked his professional reputation and his fiancée's fortune on a scrap of hieroglyphic pornography. A relentless Australian detective sets off on the case of his career, spanning the globe in search of a murderer. The confluence of these seemingly separate stories results in an explosive ending, at once inevitable and utterly unpredictable.

"Queen Elizabeth's spymasters recruit an unlikely agent--the only Muslim in England--for an impossible mission" -- Penguin Random House.

The novel "follows five American expats who come to Budapest in the early 1990s to seek their fortune. They harbor the vague suspicion that their counterparts in Prague have it better, but still they hope to find adventure, inspiration, a gold rush, or history in the making."--Publisher description.