This book is set in Egypt in the year 1923. Fifteen-year-old Alec Devlin is on his way to the Valley of the Kings. Accompanied by his faithful valet, Coates, Alec is to spend his summer holidays working on his Uncle Will's archaeological dig. It's not the first time he's spent his summer this way ...but this year things are different. Uncle Will and his young assistant, Tom Hinton, have recently made an amazing discovery - an ancient tomb hidden deep below the earth. But only hours after opening its doors, Uncle Will falls mysteriously ill and Tom seems to have disappeared without trace. Together with Ethan Wade, the young American soldier of fortune who is managing the dig in Uncle Will's absence, and a pretty French woman called Madeleine Duval, Alec sets about unravelling the tomb's mysteries. It features seemingly harmless animals that have turned into rabid killers; long dead mummies are rising from their tombs; the spirit of a powerful High Priest is claiming the bodies of the living as his living hosts; and together Alec and Ethan must confront a terror that has waited three thousand years to be reborn.