“A Nonfiction Thriller” is a very misleading thing to put on the cover of this book. It is more a tale of fiction based on history.

You will have three stories going on that you jump back and forth between. The first being ancient Egypt with Tut’s parents, the young boy, and the struggles he had as Pharaoh. The second is Howard Carter’s story, his love for Egypt, his thirst for finding a virgin tomb, and his life long quest coming to an end. And third and the much smaller tale of the three is James Patterson’s work on the book and explaining that he wanted to prove on paper that Tut was murder, how it was done, and by whom.

The portion of the book dealing with Tut is by far the most interesting; but with that comes a great deal of guessing, created dialog, and hypotheses presented with very little fact to back it up. The picture painted of ancient Egypt is beautiful and sucks you in. Tut’s interaction with his mother, the love for his half-sister/wife, his determination to prove he is ready to be Pharaoh, and the plot behind killing the young man to gain power over all of Egypt is very intriguing. But while reading I completely forgot this was supposed to be Non-fiction.

When it comes to Howard Carter’s love of Egypt and the work he did there is a lot more truth to it. He documented his work in books and journals and also no one attempted to wipe him out of history. For these chapters it was a boring version of Indiana Jones. What he went through is somewhat interesting; but Howard Carter is not an easily likeable man and because of this there is a lack of connection needed to draw me into his life fully.

Finally the few interjections of James Patterson discussing how he got the idea for this book and what he discovered is filler at best. While I’m sure there are many fans out there that would love a look at how he works, his methods, and what it took for him to accomplish writing this tale this unfortunately is not what you receive. He mentions putting a call in to start this book and how it sucked him in and made him push other things aside; but that is about it.

So does this “nonfiction thriller” accomplish what it set out to do in proving the how, what, who, and where of Tut’s murder? Not even close. It ends with theories with just enough “proof” out there to see how Patterson could have gotten to some of his ideas. But there is not hardcore evidence, nothing that will put this to rest beyond a shadow of a doubt. In fact while the story is very interesting if you are reading it as a fiction, it is rather insulting as nonfiction. James Patterson believed that in the short amount of time he was writing this book, looking through what has already been discovered by so many others out there, he was able to solve the mystery of King Tut, something that hundreds of historians & Egyptologist who have dedicated their entire lives to this subject were unable to do is rather egotistical and a little close minded to just push everything they thought aside.

If you are looking for a short fiction story about King Tut by all means give this a read and be prepared to possibly skip over some chapters. If you are looking for factual information about Tut, his life, his death, and the evidence that is out there you are going to need to find another book that is truly nonfiction.