The Iron Tomb

Gr 4–7—A mix of "Indiana Jones," National Treasure, and The Da Vinci Code. Sam Force lands in Cairo for his annual summer visit with his Uncle Jason, ready for the usual three months of ancient Egypt tutorial. This year is different, however, because Jason is not there to meet him. Instead, a young taxi driver named Hadi saves Sam from some unsavory police officers, and Sam is off on a search for his lost uncle. In this story that's complete with clues, codes, and puzzles, Sam navigates labyrinthine souks, flies across desert sand dunes on ATVs, outruns hordes of ravenous rats in the sewers of Cairo, and survives being buried inside a World War II ship left stranded in the sand when the Nile shifted course during a storm. Hadi and Mary, a girl Sam met on the plane, are sometimes friends and sometimes foes, making it difficult for Sam to know whom to trust. The pace of the story makes it hard to find a place to bookmark it for the night, but it also means that puzzles are solved a bit too quickly. It never takes Sam more than a page or three to find a clue and solve it, leading him on to the next. Accidents are fortuitous and frequent, leaving readers little opportunity to see Sam solve problems or to get to know him in any depth.