A politician survives an attempted assassination in Stockholm, and secret agent Monika Lundgren is instructed to find the people responsible. As she races across the world, through Finland, England, South Africa and Mozambique, she encounters a strange football team, a rock musician and a madman with dreams of world power.
The Egyptian Cross Mystery is a good introduction to Ellery Queen. In this fifth novel the young Ellery Queen can still be insufferable on occasion, although the presence of his college professor, Dr. Yardley, checks his impulse to exhibit his erudition. Ellery remains baffled by the bizarre murders as does the reader. A final clue hidden among detail suddenly provides Ellery, and the particularly observant reader, the key to the mystery. Stay alert for the final clue, despite deliberate distractions and misdirection.
The sleepy town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is jolted into panic when Sara Linton, paediatrician and medical examiner, finds Sibyl Adams dead in the local diner. As well as being viciously raped, Sibyl has been cut: two deep knife wounds form a lethal cross over her stomach. But it's only once Sara starts to perform the post-mortem that the full extent of the killer's brutality becomes clear.
