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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
terrific thriller, March 7, 2009
In Alexandria, excavation of a site to construct a new hotel reveals the ruins of an ancient tomb. Construction manager Mohammed el-Dahab shuts down work to notify the authorities of the find as proscribed by Egyptian law. The Feds send archeologists to catalogue the tomb. The professionals quickly determine the artifacts come from the age of Alexander the Great. As a side consequence of an Alexander age discovery, there is renewed interest in finding the tomb of the Great Macedonian conqueror.
As the fervor arises Daniel Knox works on a dive vessel in the Red Sea until his chivalrous nature gets him in trouble when the Good Samaritan rescues a woman from a sexual predatory mobster with money, connections and anger. Forced to flee, he rushes to Alexandria where he has a haven to hide in with an archeological friend Augustin until the Red Sea incident becomes forgotten. Daniel gets inside to see the new Alexandria tomb and realizes the greatness of the discovery because there are clues to where Alexander the Great was buried. He soon meets ancient Egyptian language expert Gaille Bonnard, who is part of a team working on an Alexander dig to the north. Before he knows what happened Daniel is in love and searching for Alexander's tomb.
Although overwhelmed with too many subplots, THE ALEXANDER CIPHER is a terrific thriller that cleverly interweaves historical tidbits of Ancient Egypt and Macedonia during the Alexander era into the contemporary adventure. Readers will root for Knox, a sort of modern day Indiana Jones, who gets into one hot water situation after another until the audience assumes he is an over cooked hard boiled egg. Fans will enjoy his escapades in an entertaining brisk archeological thriller.
Harriet Klausner
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great Movie Script...Rambling "Sand Storm" of a novel, April 19, 2009
This was a first good attempt by Will Adams in his attempt at fiction. He obviously has done his homework in terms of history, and his own background is well established by his knowledge of the content/geographic locale in which the book takes place. However, in reading this novel, you end up asking yourself if you've ever watched a movie where EVERYTHING was just too conveniently CO-mingled, and the realism went out the door? Despite the differences in characters, by the end of the novel, it's like this guy was trying to write the next Guy Ritchie script using an inbred family from Appalachia. The Characters all seem to have a history with one another, literally - all of them are within the 2nd degree of separation (ref: 6 degrees theory). I'm not going to give things away because the plot is well founded and makes for great reading. But the way Will Adams put this thing together, it would make for a better movie script than an actual novel.
Now, don't get me wrong, and you may disagree with this. But every author writes in their own style/syntax - it seems as though Adams is trying to come into his own. There is a great deal of confusion in terms of character references. He uses a lot of pronouns without a lot of congruence. There are times when there are 2 or more characters involved in an event and it becomes a chore in deciding "who the F#" just said/did/or is the author referring?! Again, I will say that this was a good read. It would have been better, had Adams put this novel through at least one more edit.
The main story, the overall plot, and its originality are great. The characters are "so-so", the back story of the characters is very blah (because of the "co-mingling" of their fates - seriously, it's like a "red-neck" family feud set in Egypt). I'm sorry...no one group of "strangers" can be so intermingled - and then flip-flopped into knowing each other because of the central belief of a deranged lunatic and his son - especially in a place so big as the Mediterranean.
Which brings me to my harshest critique - the author is writing in English. But it's like he's writing Americans, Greeks, Frenchman, Australians, and Arabs like a Briton. I'm not being racist, but there are certain things that different people of the world say in terms of their manner, syntax, and slang. The text didn't come across that way. The characters were dynamic to a certain degree, but it came across a bit contrived. That and the fact that again, the pronouns (He, She, and They)were so overused that you couldn't readily tell who was doing what, without doing a double take.
Overall - the book has the potential to be a better movie script. A novel...not so much. A historical view of some really neat facts on Alexander, Ptolemy, and the chaos that still plagues Egypt regarding her history - absolutely a find. To the author....try a bit more editing on the next story. But hey if you can sell this one to Hollywood...do it!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Review by www.cymlowell.blogspot.com, February 22, 2010
Will Adams creates a new thriller character destined to be a long-running series of best sellers. Daniel Knox is a knock-around archaeologist in Egypt with a history of interesting relationships with his brethren and sponsors.
The supervisor of a construction project in Alexandria stumbles onto a potential site of the final resting place of Alexander the Great, whose body was coveted as a justification for power by his successors in Egypt, the Ptolemys, Alexander's native Macedonians.
The race begins in the fashion of an Indiana Jones movie. Knox is pursued by a bad guy for saving a young girl from being raped by the tyrant. Along the way, there is a budding love affair with a woman who blamed Knox for the odd death of her archaeologist father, an evil female colleague who seems easily seduced by lovers and sources of money, a little girl desperately in need of a bone marrow transplant, rich Macedonian nationalists intent on using Alexander's body as the means, after more than 2,000 years, of fomenting revolution to establish a separate Macedonia out of Greece and Balkan states.
The Alexander Cipher beautifully blends the history of Alexander and his successors into an entertaining, rip-roaring, action-packed, page-turning adventure. The past of Daniel also will not remain there, as the female protagonist in the story, Gillie, moves from a hatred attributable to the strange death of her father to something more beautiful.
This is an excellent, well-crafted story. It cries out for a sequel in the adventures of Daniel Knox.
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