The Anubis Murders by Gary Gygax
(introduction by Erik Mona), Planet Stories, $12.99, 207pp, tp, 9781601250421. Fantasy.
Warning: this review contains some spoilers.
Gary Gygax created Dungeons & Dragons, and with it, the whole role-playing game phenomenon. But as Erik Mona says in his introduction, it wasn’t entirely out of whole cloth. Gygax’s bookcase was stuffed with the classics of fantasy and horror, and he drew liberally from them for his most enduring creation.
After launching the gaming world, Gygax moved into writing novels, and this one, written in 1992, definitely shows its author’s roots. Set in a parallel world to ours, Yarth is the home of mystery and magic, and Magister Setne Inhetep is an Egyptian wizard-priest of Thoth. Vacationing in Spain with his former slave, now bodyguard, and seeming concubine (except she isn’t), Inhetep is approached by three high officials from Lyonnesse (part of this world’s British isles) to return with them to help solve the mystery and crimes of the self-styled Master of Jackals.
Inhetep may be this world’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, but he actually goes out and gets his hands (metaphorically) dirty. But in a late-medieval world of magic-users and muscle, he stands out as a thinker. The crimes are, to some degree, not what they seem, and in addition to murder and religious extortion, there may be revolution behind some of the seemingly incomprehensible activities. But Inhetep sees his way through.
I had a little trouble with his mystery-solving abilities, as Inhetep seemed to frequently jump to the right conclusion without any real proof (or, in some cases, evidence). Nevertheless, I was taken with the character and his world. I’m not sure if he ever continued, but this volume seems a good episode of what could be an interesting series of books or television shows.
The book also serves as the debut novel for Paizo Publishing’s new line of classic science fiction and fantasy reprints under the Planet Stories imprint. It’s a worthy start, and I’ll look forward to reading more. (See this article for more information on Planet Stories.)