The Deceit

High-concept adventure thriller set in Egypt and Cornwall. What connects a lost hoard of ancient religious texts with a revival in satanic rituals? In the sands of Egypt, scattered fragments of an ancient treasure blow on the desert winds...

The Sokar Hoard, supposedly the most valuable religious artefact since the Gnostic Gospels or the Dead Sea Scrolls, has been lost for millennia. Written in an obscure Coptic dialect, rumoured to contain earth-shattering revelations about the nature of religion, it has been obsessively hidden from the sight of man. Holy men who have read the contents have gone mad and tried to destroy it, or themselves.

Meanwhile, in Cornwall's remote western moorlands, where abandoned mine shafts crumble into the sea, evidence of horrible rituals have come to light, rituals that bizarrely appear to have Coptic connections. DI Karen Trevithick, returning to her native Cornwall after the death of her mother, finds herself caught up in this unsettling mystery. Amid political turmoil in Egypt, scholar Ryan Harpur, adventurer Helen Fassbinder, and antiquarian Albert Hanna must piece together the puzzle of the Hoard.

The future of the Middle East - maybe even the entire world - could rest on what the Sokar Hoard contains.