Pilot Who Knows the Water (The Lord Hani Mysteries Book 6) by N.L. Holmes – Review by Maryn Belling

Pilot Who Knows the Waters by N.L. Holmes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pilot Who Knows the Water (The Lord Hani Mysteries Book 6) by N.L. Holmes – Review by Maryn Belling
In the mystery-style of Alexander McCall Smith and thickly set prose of Gabriel García Márquez, N.L. Holm again transports us to Egypt for a 6th time.

In addition to continuing the literary detail of earlier texts, Book 6 has a cast of characters and glossary at the beginning of the text. Resultantly, the reader is more at ease than when they first met Lord Hani. In addition, those tools allow newcomers to familiarize themselves with the persons, places, and political constructs of 1335 BCE without prerequisite reading.

Readers of previous Lord Hani mysteries will find resolutions of unanswered wonderings in previous tales. In a deft work of authorship, however, those elements are not obstructive to first-time visitors to ancient Egypt. Rather those silver-threads of continuity provide a thrall of entrez-nous to visit other adventures.

Beyond the story’s overt purpose (Lord Hani’s journey to find a husband for the queen), readers may choose to consider similarities and differences in their own lives. Whether in lived experiences, observations, hamartia, devotions, or epistemologies history (even in novel form) grants us a portal to introspection.

Interestingly enough, and almost as a direct indicator of the diplomatic dexterity of our hero, we seem to have shed nearly all of the euphemistic vulgarities of Lord Hani’s internal dialogue and those of his companions.

Pilot Who Knows the Water, The Lord Hani Mysteries Series, N.L. Holmes, Review, Itsy Bitsy Book Bits. Historical, Cozy Mystery, Maryn Belling, June 2022

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