Bondurant, Matt. The Third Translation

With time running out on his contract to decode an ancient Egyptian tablet, an obsessed scholar is seduced and seemingly abandoned by others with equal but less pure interest in the deep past. Bondurant's debut entry in the growing genre of academic crypto-thrillers considers the real-life Stela of Paser, an Egyptian relic held by the British Museum (where the author once worked).

The Third Translation is a modest attempt at a literary page-turner. The author definitely produces well-crafted fiction that makes you smell and hear the streets of Egypt, as well as the Soho section of a modern London. The descriptions of the British Library, its antiquities, and the art of unravelling the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt is fascinating, and rings true as the main character, Walter Rothschild, tries to find sense and meaning in the Stela of Paser, as well as his own bedraggled and complicated empty life. Empty except for his overwhelming need and drive to solve the cryptograms that hieroglyphs represent.

The thriller part does not work as well because, frankly, I ceased to care about what all the bad guys appeared to be after. And I really resented that the ending was as cryptic as the Stela of Paser's third translation. Maybe I just didn't get it, but for a thriller to work well the reader needs to care about the outcome and find some solution to the inital problem presented. Sadly, I experienced neither while admiring the art of the the writer in brilliant descriptive passages and shaking my head at the conclusion of the story. Perhaps in his next attempt this promising author's lucious prose will find a happier marriage with plot and pace.

Leane M. Ellis, June 21, 2005.