Gore Vidal might be the last person you’d expect to find on the pages of a crime fiction site, but the patrician intellectual could, and did, write in almost any style and genre. In classic pulp style, he tells the tale of an American who becomes embroiled in the seedy and dangerous world of of the bars, brothels and bazaars of 1950s Cairo. Accepting a mission on behalf of a wealthy businessman, Peter Wells ends up threading his way between various hazards, including a stolen wallet, a deadly scorpion in his luggage, a mysterious German chanteuse, a street riot… and an attempt to separate him from his private parts against the timeless backdrop of one of Egypt’s most iconic archaeological sites. Enjoy the spectacularly lurid cover and read Mike Parker’s full review here.