St. Martin's Minotaur, February 2002

Louie Dolores strides over Chicago like the skyscrapers he builds. While he has built a formidable array of enemies by his law-skirting tactics and his lack of regard for the architectural history of his city, he has also built a fortune--some of he is using to bring in a set of ancient mummies from Chili which he plans to show in one of his own buildings. The protests outside don't bother Dolores--he'll use them for publicity. When the mummies inside seem to be coming to life, Dolores is quick to bring that to the newspapers as well. But is he too smart for his own good? When Dolores ends up murdered, a two-thousand-year-old mummy is the only suspect.

Police Detective Jeremy Ransom, along with his friend the elderly Miss Emily Charters is called to look into death threats against Dolores--threats that become horribly real. The two sleuths find that Dolores hadn't just made enemies, a whole range of people hated him and wanted him dead. Yet hatred isn't enough. Someone had to actually kill--and neither believe that one of the museum mummies really came back to life.

Author Fred Hunter (click here to read other BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by this author) uses a light touch to deal with a deadly subject. Hunter does a fine job depicting the destruction associated with murder--ruins of marriages, careers, and even sanity that extend far beyond the victim and perp.

I felt a little cheated by the end of the novel--which came too quickly to deliver the full impact of the solution but otherwise found THE MUMMY'S RANSOM to be quite enjoyable.

Three Stars

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