Sam Bourne, author of The Right­eous Men, has writ­ten anoth­er thriller involv­ing archae­ol­o­gy and inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. In 2003, dur­ing the Iraq war, a teenag­er par­tic­i­pat­ing in the loot­ing of the Bagh­dad Muse­um of Antiq­ui­ties steals an ancient clay tablet from a vault. Sev­er­al years lat­er at a peace ral­ly in Israel, the Israeli prime min­is­ter address­es a crowd. A man approach­es him and appears to be reach­ing for a gun. The secu­ri­ty detail kills him, but he only had a note that he want­ed to give the prime min­is­ter in his hand. This acci­den­tal killing trig­gers a series of revenge killings that could derail nego­ti­a­tions lead­ing to a peace agree­ment. The Unit­ed Sates gov­ern­ment asks Mag­gie Costel­lo, a skilled nego­tia­tor who has retired from the stress­ful work, to come and save the peace talks. She agrees, in part to escape from an abu­sive rela­tion­ship. As she fol­lows the trail from West Bank set­tle­ments to Pales­tin­ian refugee camps, she dis­cov­ers that these deaths are not ran­dom. There is a pat­tern. The two men were archae­ol­o­gists and his­to­ri­ans who knew about ancient secrets. Costel­lo soon finds her­self drawn into both high-stakes inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and the trade in stolen antiq­ui­ties, as well as bib­li­cal rid­dles and fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gion. There is enough action here to keep read­ers turn­ing the pages.