{"id":10411,"date":"2023-04-24T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10411"},"modified":"2023-04-23T18:41:33","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T22:41:33","slug":"the-lost-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10411","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"
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If you\u2019ve ever traveled to Egypt, Christopher Bollen\u2019s fast-paced new thriller, The Lost Americans<\/em>,<\/a> will take you back there. And, if you\u2019ve never been, when you finish this book, you may feel as if you\u2019ve made the trip. The Sahara dust settling on everything, the smells of baking bread and dirty camels, the competing cries of the muzzeins, the golden, dust-laden light of late afternoon, and the vicious, inches-to-spare traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manhattanite Cate Castle has never visited Egypt, so it\u2019s all new to her, overlaid with a pall of grief and anxiety after the shock of her older brother\u2019s death in Cairo. He reportedly died in a fall from the balcony of his room in the Ramses Sands Hotel. In the country on business, Eric was not yet forty and working for a boutique international arms supplier called Polaris. Egypt is one of Polaris\u2019s best customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in New York before this trip, Eric\u2019s death doesn\u2019t sit right with Cate. She doesn\u2019t believe the emerging official line that Eric committed suicide and insists on asking questions. She even enlists a retired forensic pathologist to examine his body. Defensive wounds. Injuries on both sides of his head, which a fall wouldn\u2019t produce. Not to mention that his hotel room was only on the third floor. A fall from that height would likely be survivable. If you think Cate is becoming a little obsessed, you\u2019ll also agree she has plenty of reason to be\u2014especially when Polaris offers her family a multi-million-dollar settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the trip to Egypt. She\u2019s a fundraiser for an arts organization, not any sort of investigator, but what she lacks in experience she more than makes up for in motivation. Where to start that won\u2019t get her in trouble? Let\u2019s just say that she doesn\u2019t need to go looking for it. From the moment she sets foot in the Cairo airport, it seems she\u2019s in danger, and the pace of the novel never slackens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone seems to be lying to her, including Eric\u2019s former work colleagues, his boss\u2019s wife, the hotel staff, Eric\u2019s embassy contact. It\u2019s a cinch they\u2019re not telling her everything. Cate stays busy finding people to interview and doesn\u2019t spend much time sightseeing. But the sights and exoticism of Egypt are all around her. Her Grand Nile hotel is on the banks of one of the world\u2019s longest and oldest rivers, which not only cleaves the country, it makes it possible. A few miles east or west is basically desert. To someone like Cate, who grew up in the sylvan Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts, the compression of so many people, so much living, and so much history into this narrow strip of land feels almost claustrophobic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bollen has an admirable literary writing style. He conveys ideas and feelings in ways that are both inventive and quite on point. From that standpoint and the fact that he\u2019s willing to assume some cultural awareness on the part of his readers, the writing stands out. On the negative side, from time to time, he goes on too long with backstory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been asking myself whether Cate is a plausible female protagonist. She\u2019s certainly plucky and determined. Perfectly likeable. A little irrational, in that she broke up a good relationship back home through her own infidelity. But does she act like a woman would act when she wants information someone doesn\u2019t want to share, or the way a woman would act in a tight situation? Or does she act more like a man with a woman\u2019s name? I can\u2019t put my finger on what bothers me about her, but just the fact that the question occurred to me makes me think she doesn\u2019t exactly ring true, but it\u2019s a small point in an otherwise well-conceived, extremely evocative thriller that respects the reader\u2019s intellect. I liked it a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get The Lost Americans<\/a><\/em> here (Amazon affiliate link) and, if you ‘re looking for great reading, try my quarterly newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> and receive three prize-winning short stories! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever traveled to Egypt, Christopher Bollen\u2019s fast-paced new thriller, The Lost Americans, will take you back there. And, if you\u2019ve never been, when you finish this book, you may feel as if you\u2019ve made the trip. The Sahara … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Edge-of-your-seat mystery set in Egypt. An Americans searches for answers to her brother's death. The authorities say suicide, she says \"no!\"\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1335,1749,126,32],"tags":[2086,2087],"class_list":["post-10411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-international","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-christopher-bollen","tag-the-lost-americans"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2HV","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10414,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10411\/revisions\/10414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}