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Paperback Details
  • 02/2002
  • 9781941237328
  • 296 pages
  • $18.99
Leonard Krishtalka
Author
The Camel Driver: A Harry Przewalski Novel
Arab Courier Attacked by Lions, a world-famous diorama at the Carnegie Museum, is vandalized in the middle of the night—the glass smashed, the belly of the taxidermied camel slit open. Police find bits of flesh and fiber in the sand below. The flesh is from an infant, the fibers from an oiled cloth used to mummify cadavers. The diorama depicts the sudden, ferocious attack by two Barbary lions on a Bedouin courier crossing the Sahara on a dromedary. It was created by a French taxidermist and naturalist for the 1867 Paris World Exposition, where it won the gold medal. The Carnegie hires Harry Przewalski to uncover the macabre history of Arab Courier. Who is the camel driver—his skull, skeleton and skin are mounted under his clothing. Who is the child—why was it sewn into the camel’s belly 150 years ago? Is the vandalism connected to an apparent suicide of a brilliant Carnegie Museum archaeologist? The case immerses Przewalski in the moral dilemmas of sanctioned evil: a lurid trial, sexual betrayal, an unwanted child, and slavery in Cape Town, South Africa in the early 1800s. Fresh graves plundered thirty years apart in Botswana and Tunisia. Hundred-year-old newborns preserved in alcohol in a Paris museum. Skull bones and teeth of a Neanderthal infant from a Belgian cave. And the ugly prejudices about race, peoples, and our place and purpose in Nature. Przewalski discovers what was stolen from the belly of the camel: an archaeological bombshell worth killing for in a murderous race for scientific fame.
Reviews
Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Przewalski

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2020

I’ve been waiting for it, and I’m happy to report that this third Przewalski novel is indeed excellent. This time the detective searches for the perpetrator of a crime in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh via a historic court trial in Capetown, South Africa, and archives in Paris. Blending history with mystery the author presents the sordid background of taxidermy with contemporary academy intrigue. A range of interesting characters and delicious descriptions of place command the reader's attention to the end.

Amazon Canada

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Mystery

Reviewed in Canada on April 29, 2021

Pittsburg's Carnegie Museum is the latest museum to be hit by a series of robberies. A popular exhibit, Arab Courier Attacked by Lions, has been damaged and the belly of the camel ripped open. Strangely, it appears something has been stolen from inside the camel, leaving behind a small bit of cloth and a mummified hand. After investigation, it appears the cloth was wrapped around the body of a small child.

Given the nature of the crime, the police call in Harry Przewalski, once a Paleontologist, now a private investigator. When it becomes clear the body is very old, they suggest Harry investigate that mystery while the police continue investigating the break-in. This will take Harry to Africa and France and the journal of taxidermist Jules Verreaux who had built the original diorama 150 years ago and the more Harry learns about the man, the more intrigued he becomes. He learns that Verreaux had seduced a young woman in South Africa who became pregnant. The woman had sued him for refusing to marry her but, for some reason, Harry can find no record of the child. Was she the baby entombed in the camel's belly and, if so, was the theft the result of a descendant of the mother still seeking revenge after all these years? Or is the story much bigger than that?

The Camel Driver is the third addition to the Harry Przewalski series by Leonard Krishtalka and it confirms my belief that this is one of the best mystery series around today. It combines a hard-boiled detective story seamlessly entwined with real history, in this case, the history of Verreaux, a brilliant taxidermist but a flawed man who, in fact, was the creator of the original and very real diorama, Lion Attacking Dromedary, that was years later discovered to contain human skull with teeth - I was so intrigued by the story that I looked it up which is just one of the reasons why I am such a fan of this series. it is also smart, compelling, pretty much unputdownable despite being more cerebral than action, and, while loving the mysteries, they make me want to learn more about the history they're based around. All I can say, if you love smart, well-written mysteries with a bit of the hard-boiled detective combined with actual history, this one's for you.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

KIRKUS REVIEWS

THE CAMEL DRIVER 

From the Harry Przewalski Novel series , Vol. 3

BY LEONARD KRISHTALKA ‧ RELEASE DATE: 11/28/2020

In Krishtalka’s (Death Spoke, 2019, etc.) third mystery-series installment, a private detective and former paleontologist investigates a bizarre incident with a complex historical pedigree. 

At Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum, a well-known historical diorama—Arab Courier Attacked by Lions, “one of America’s cultural treasures”—has been torn apart by someone who also attacked the exhibit’s guard. The assailant then sliced open the belly of the taxidermic camel and took something that, upon inspection, appears to have been the mummified remains of a small, female child. Without any clear suspect or motive for the crime, the police call in Harry Przewalski, a private investigator who once worked at the museum as a paleontologist; after a series of personal misfortunes, he’d joined the military and “fled to the violent solitude of a desert war.” Liza Kole, another paleontologist and who has also been Harry’s romantic partner in the past, informs him that the art installation was created, to great fanfare, 150 years ago by Jules Verreaux; he was known as the “finest taxidermist in France”—one with the skills to “give immortality” to the dead. Anna Storck, the museum’s physical anthropologist, commits suicide only two days after the vandalism, and police believe that the two events are unconnected. But Harry, in his inimitable style, is skeptical: “Yeah, well, in our business coincidence could be a fact just waiting for an equation.” He soon finds that Verreaux had seduced and impregnated a Elisabeth Greef, Dutch woman, in Capetown, South Africa, and when he abandoned her, she “sued him for betrayal.” The child inside the camel could have been hers—and the vandalism, an act of revenge.  Over the course of this novel, Krishtalka artfully conjures the grim life of the prodigiously talented Verreaux. The taxidermist is such a sordid character that there were indeed multiple reasons why someone one would want to take revenge upon him—even a century and a half after he’d created his diorama. Throughout, the author presents the evidence with great skill: Verreaux’s journals, the letters between him and Elisabeth, and detailed accounts of the trial in which she sued him for breach of contract are all revealed to connect to the modern-day mystery. Krishtalka’s prose is powerfully versatile, alternating between the sort of terse, unsentimental phrasing that one would expect from a detective story and poetical elegance. At one point, for example, when Harry sees a pencil sketch of Elisabeth, he finds himself swept away: “For a moment, Harry was lost in the damp heat of her bed, that angular face fierce in love or revenge, the full lips primed to kiss or slay, the wild hair on the pillow exploding in fervor or fury, the bare back arched in rapture or revolt, the long legs in ecstasy or constriction.” Harry’s own life also poignantly reveals duality, but his is a tug of war between painful memories and a longing to rejoin the land of the living. 

A fiercely intelligent crime drama as emotionally sharp as it is historically inventive. 

 

News
01/30/2021
Named Best Mystery by Mystery Tribune, November 2020

 

The Camel Driver by Leonard Krishtalka.

Paleontologist turned private investigator, Harry Przewalski, excavates the dirty underbelly of people’s lives, unearthing sexual betrayals, treachery, fraud and murder buried beneath the science of petrified shards, skin and bones. Ultimately, he must face a brutal killing in his own past, when he fled to a desert war and came back with a gun and a license to detect.

A famous, 140-year-old museum diorama is vandalized––it depicts the ferocious attack by two lions on a North African courier crossing the Sahara on a dromedary. The belly of the taxidermied camel has been sliced open and a bundle removed, shedding bits of flesh from a child. Harry is hired to investigate the macabre history of the exhibit.

The taxidermist has a grisly past: a sexual affair, a lover’s betrayal, a lurid trial, and graves in Botswana and Tunisia plundered for human dioramas. The camel driver’s skull and skin are mounted under his clothing. In a Paris museum, a dead archaeologist, a bloodstained journal, and the theft of a Neanderthal child’s skull and teeth lead Harry to the stolen bundle––a scientific bombshell worth killing for in a murderous race for fame.

Formats
Paperback Details
  • 02/2002
  • 9781941237328
  • 296 pages
  • $18.99
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