“I feel great joy and great sadness, having just finished The Labyrinth of Osiris. The great joy comes from discovering an author of unbelievable talent. The great sadness comes from finding out that he died suddenly last May, at age 46. Fortunately for future fans there are four books by Sussman. Labyrinth is the last, published in the U.S. late in 2012.
The story of the The Labyrinth of Osiris opens with the rape of a blind 20-year-old woman in 1931, followed by the discovery of an unknown murder victim in a burial shaft in 1972, then in the present by the murder of an Israeli newspaper reporter (female) in the Cathedral of St. James in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Throw in Ecoterrorism and a multibillion, multinational corporation based in Houston and just try to figure out which thread that Israeli police detective Arieh Ben-Roi and Egyptian police detective Yusuf Khalifa should follow. The two detectives are real, and you feel for them as their fortunes rise and fall over and over again.
One section of the book finds one of the men trapped in a cave for nearly 24 hours without benefit of ANY light, food or water. At the climax of that chapter my heart was racing as fast as the character's heart. My adrenaline was clear off the chart. Without a doubt, that scene was the most dramatic I have ever read. And I read a lot.
My advice: GO! BUY! READ!” —Jim Harris, retired independent NW book rep
