{"id":6359,"date":"2025-04-12T06:06:48","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=6359"},"modified":"2025-04-12T06:06:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:06:48","slug":"maha-khan-phillips-the-museum-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/maha-khan-phillips-the-museum-detective\/","title":{"rendered":"Maha Khan Phillips: The Museum Detective"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Gul Delani is an art historian working at the Museum of History and Heritage in Karachi, Pakistan.\u00a0 She has basically forced her way into the museum by more or less creating her own department and curating her own staff of eager grad students.\u00a0 When she gets a middle of the night phone call, she thinks it\u2019s information about her long missing niece, Mahnaz, who had vanished at 15, but instead, it\u2019s an order to get dressed and get in a car for a long ride. When she arrives, she\u2019s asked to take a look at what could possibly be the mummy of a legendary princess of Persepolis.<\/p>\n

Since Mummification was not a known method of corpse disposal in ancient Iran, this discovery could be paradigm changing, and Gul is beside herself with excitement when the police agree to deliver the mummy to her museum for further investigation.\u00a0 Her grad students share her excitement and do their best to create a secure environment for remains that could be thousands of years old.\u00a0 For assistance, Gul calls on an old Cambridge friend, Harry, who facilitates the translation of the cuneiform on the mummy\u2019s tomb.<\/p>\n

To me the actual main character of this novel is Karachi itself, and the author, who was born there, paints a vivid picture of daily life in the capital, as well as Gul\u2019s specific routine, which includes volunteering at a shelter where she teaches classes. Coming from a wealthy family she has an array of connections, both high and low, and it\u2019s the street connections who help her when the mummy disappears.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a miasma of grief surrounds Gul.\u00a0 Her niece has been missing for three years, but the powerful sense of loss remains, with the continuing uncertainty making things even worse.\u00a0 Mahnaz is always in the back of Gul\u2019s mind, but to her immense frustration her parents and upwardly mobile brother and straight-laced sister-in-law really don\u2019t want to talk about the situation anymore. Gul pushes forward to discover what has happened to the mummy, with several attempts made on her life as she begins to unravel the crime and the true origins of the mysterious artifact. Since this is a mystery, astute readers know the stories of the missing mummy and the missing niece must inevitably intersect.<\/p>\n

I loved Gul the character, and was gripped by the story of her close relationship with her niece, who seems to share more traits with her aunt than with her uptight parents. As Gul reads through Mahnaz\u2019s diaries, the girl comes alive to the reader, making her loss all the more poignant.\u00a0 I won\u2019t give away the resolutions that Phillips provides, so you may have the pleasure of reading the book for yourself to discover them.\u00a0 When I closed the covers I felt I had been on both an armchair and emotional journey to the city of Karachi.\u00a0\u00a0— Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Gul Delani is an art historian working at the Museum of History and Heritage in Karachi, Pakistan.\u00a0 She has basically forced her way into the museum by more or less creating her own department and curating her own staff of eager grad students.\u00a0 When she gets a middle of the night phone call, she … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1057,11,2063,2067,2065,2066,1276,664,2064],"class_list":["post-6359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-international","tag-maha-khan-phillips","tag-missing-niece","tag-mummies","tag-pakistan","tag-robin-agnew","tag-soho-crime","tag-the-museum-detective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6361,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6359\/revisions\/6361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}