The Stolen Chalice
A Novel
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
Veteran CNN journalist Kitty Pilgrim follows her acclaimed thriller debut, The Explorer’s Code, with a riveting page-turner combining the glamour of the international art world and a devastating terrorist plot.
The black-tie gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art promises to be a star-studded evening. Beautiful, young oceanographer Cordelia Stapleton and dashing, urbane archaeologist John Sinclair have flown in from Alexandria, Egypt, to help celebrate ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian culture with New York’s elite.
The influential crowd of artists, collectors, scientists, and New York society dine and dance at the museum’s historic Temple of Dendur, unaware that terrorists are planning to attack. Fortunately, museum security and police stop the terrorists, but the evening is a disaster.
The next morning, Cordelia and Sinclair learn that an art theft ring struck New York while they were at the museum. All over the city, pieces of Egyptian art have been stolen.
Ted VerPlanck—a pillar of New York society whom Cordelia met the night before—discovers that his penthouse apartment was robbed and the legendary Sardonyx Cup, an ancient Egyptian chalice, is missing. Ted asks John Sinclair to help him recover his precious artifact.
Aided by British and American security forces, Sinclair sets out to find the missing art, which holds clues to where and when a future attack will take place. The action moves from a sprawling ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to a castle on Scotland’s rugged coastline, a beautiful two-hundred-foot yacht in the Mediterranean, the mysterious canals of Venice, the premier beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, and ultimately Cairo. Romance sizzles as Sinclair, Cordelia, and Holly Graham are caught in a love triangle, distracted by their emotions, and unknowingly moving closer to mortal danger.
Superstition and science meet head-on. And one question remains unanswered—does the Sardonyx Cup have special powers?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In CNN journalist Pilgrim's overheated second romantic thriller featuring archeologist John Sinclair and oceanographer Cordelia Stapleton (after 2011's The Explorer's Code), the pair face an exhausting series of trials, which range from a heist at a Metropolitan Museum of Art gala to the looming threat of a catastrophic attack designed to bring down "half the governments of the industrialized world." Pilgrim populates her book's world with beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes and accessories, who travel in style on yachts and private jets, a description that applies to the good and bad guys alike. Chief villains are the exotic Lady Xandra Sommerset, a "British royal and international party girl," and charismatic Moustaffa Gemeyal, head of the terrorist group Common Dream and Xandra's lover. Sinclair's former lover, Egyptologist Dr. Hollis Graham, adds romantic tension. The action moves all over the world, with stops in New York, London, Scotland, and Venice, before reaching its fevered and unlikely climax in Sharm el Sheikh.
