基本信息出版社：Minotaur Books
页码：352 页
出版日期：2007年06月
ISBN：0312360991
International Standard Book Number：0312360991
条形码：9780312360993
EAN：9780312360993
版本：1st
装帧：精装
正文语种：英语

内容简介 British-occupied Cairo, 1928: Several young children have disappeared and were then found, horribly mutilated, in the tombs just outside the city. Panic is spreading among the locals after a cloaked giant is sighted. Has a ghoul from One Thousand and One Nights been brought to life? British inspector Jeremy Matheson follows the trail of the monster, which takes him into the depths of underground Cairo, as well as deep into his own tortured past.
Mont-Saint-Michel, 2005: Marion has taken refuge in the wind-swept and remote monastery located on a spit of land on the west coast of France. In the wake of a scandal, caused by her own revelations, that is now reverberating through the French capital, she has been spirited away from Paris and brought here by the French Secret Service for her own protection. When she finds a diary dating from 1928 in the monastery library, penned by Jeremy Matheson and hidden inside the jacket of an Edgar Allan Poe book, she is inexorably pulled into the past as she follows his investigation. Soon she feels she is being watched, and taunting notes and riddles urge her to give back what is not hers. Could one of the brothers or sisters at the monastery be behind this? And who is the old man Marion befriends?
The two stories intertwine and culminate in an absolutely baffling climax in this cinematic bestselling thriller from France. Meticulously researched and fast-paced, The Cairo Diary is a stunning mystery.

作者简介 After stints as an actor, night watchman, and bookseller, Maxim Chattam studied criminology in Paris. He is also the author of several plays, a well-received trilogy, The Soul of Evil, In Darkness, and Evil Spells, as well as the recently released thriller The Mysteries of Chaos. He lives in Poissy, France.
媒体推荐 Praise for The Cairo Diary
“Maxim Chattam’s The Cairo Diary gives us memorable portraits of both contemporary, storm-tossed Mont-Saint-Michel and sepia-toned 1920s Cairo in a marvelously atmospheric thriller. The tale climaxes, as two stories converge, with a startling double-twist ending that leaves the reader more than a little off-balance but hankering for more.”
—Susanne Alleyn, author of Game of Patience and A Far Better Rest

“Two extraordinary tales, seamlessly woven into a single, chilling tapestry by a master weaver of yarns.”
—Peter May, author of The Firemaker and The Fourth Sacrifice

“One of the best contemporary thriller authors . . . there is a toughness to his stories, a truth to his characters, and a writing style that, even though it flirts with the fantastical, always stays realistic.Chattam knows how to make the most of his readers’ fears and phobias”
—Le Monde

“Maxime Chattam will haunt your nights for a long time to come.”
—La Voix du Nord
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

A bestseller in France, this mystery from Chattam (The Soul of Evil) is unlikely to repeat that success in the U.S. After stumbling across a political coverup, Marion, a clerical employee at a Paris morgue, takes refuge in remote Mont-Saint-Michel. There, while inventorying some books, Marion discovers bound within the covers of Poe's Narrative of A. Gordon Pym the diary of an English detective, Jeremy Matheson, describing his probe into a series of sadistic child murders in 1928 Cairo. Marion becomes obsessed with the diary and in finding the solution to the old case. Strangely, the third-person diary selections include the thoughts of characters who could not have conveyed them to Matheson. This oddity will raise the suspicions of astute readers, who will be less than shocked by the twist ending. In that subgenre featuring a modern character who seeks the truth about a past crime through study of a secret document, this effort comes up short.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

This richly atmospheric crime novel tells two stories in parallel. The first concerns Marion, a secretary in the Paris morgue, who inadvertently exposes a scandal that may reach the highest levels of government. The French secret service spirits her off to a safe house near the fabled monastery of Mont St. Michel for her own safety. The second plot element concerns the diary of an English detective in Cairo in 1928. In a time when Egyptian nationalism is on the rise, Detective Jeremy Matheson is investigating the unspeakably brutal murders of four children in the seething Egyptian capital. The crimes are so brutal that many in Cairo fear that a ghul, a ghoul from Arabic legend, is stalking the city. Marion discovers the diary in the monastery library and begins to read it as a distraction from her own fears, but as she reads, she discovers that Jeremy's investigation has become her obsession. Chatta effectively challenges the reader's ability to discern the nature of truth in this beguiling mix of contemporary and historical mystery. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
文摘 Chapter One
Paris, November 2005
Paris was muttering angrily.
A storm of indignation was shaking the entire city. The thunder of public rallies battered the fronts of Haussmann’s buildings, echoing through the alleyways on the great boulevards, until it reached the ministers.
A leaden sky had lain across the roofs since the scandal began, strangling the capital like a too-tight scarf.
Never had France known a November like it: so icy and yet so electric.
The press had been dining out on it for the last three weeks; certain journalists went as far as stating that November 2005 would relegate May 1968 to the ranks of an anecdotal skirmish if things continued in the same way.
The newspaper stands flashed past like milestones in one of the rear windows of the powerful sedan, issuing their information in regular doses, vital for survival in a civilized environment. All the front pages gave details of the Affair as they saw it; there was scarcely any room for the rest of the news.
The sedan was running alongside a large truck.
Suddenly, the reflection of a face appeared in its rear window.
Marion flinched imperceptibly as she suddenly came face-to-face with herself.
Her face was a ghost’s. Her pleasant features were not sufficient today to make her easy on the eye; she had grown too pale, her split lip divided her face like the comma in an eternally unfinished sentence, her sandy hair showed a few streaks of white, and, in particular, her eyes had lost all their brightness. The inquisitive, jade-green flame had given way to two dying embers.
She was approaching forty, and life had just presented her with a really great gift.
The leather squeaked as the man at her side leaned toward the driver and asked him to take a right. Marion blinked in an attempt to forget her face.
Three males, as virile as they were cryptic, were surrou
……