“Indiana Jones Meets the Three Musketeers” is how I’d pitch this novel to a movie studio. Ethan Gage isn’t a trained archaeologist and more of a rogue than Professor Jones—and he encounters plenty of muskets but no Musketeers—but otherwise that high concept pretty much sums up Dietrich’s yarn. The thing is, I like the Indiana Jones movies (all except Temple of Doom) have long been a sucker for Dumas. So I guess it was pretty inevitable that I found myself enjoying this book too.

Gage, an American who gains a minor amount of notoriety Paris by virtue of his connections with Ben Franklin, is going nowhere fast. He has skills and courage, but little conviction about his life’s direction. Winning an odd pendant, supposedly once worn by Cleopatra, in a poker game, however, sets off a chain of events that leads him to join Napoleon’s army in its conquest of Egypt. The pendant is wanted by the mysterious (but clearly unscrupulous) Count Silano, supposedly an ally of Tallyrand. Gage, put off by Silano’s unsubtle attempts to get the pendant, decides to decipher it himself.

It’s a rousing tale of adventure: naval battles, the French army on the march, Egyptian mystics and militants, the pyramids, a hidden treasure, and the obligatory girl (gorgeous and sometimes scantily clad, of course!). Dietrich has a nice way with history; his Napoleon is great and flawed in equal measures, but very well drawn. After a while, the plot’s coincidences and close calls wear a bit thin, but overall this is fun and fast story.