The Lost Americans

At the start of this smoothly written if somewhat slow literary thriller from Bollen (A Beautiful Crime), Eric Castle, who works for a high-powered American defense contractor manufacturing state-of-the-art weapons and armaments, returns one afternoon to his hotel in Cairo. That night, he takes a fatal fall from his hotel room’s third-floor balcony. In the morning, a hotel porter discovers his body on the pavement; the authorities rule his death a suicide. Meanwhile in New York City, Eric’s sister, Cate Castle, has just broken up with her boyfriend when she hears the bad news about him. Certain that her brother didn’t die by suicide, Cate travels to Cairo, where she enlists the help of an Egyptian friend of a friend, Omar, to follow up on clues Eric sent her shortly before his death. Soon she’s up to her neck in danger and intrigue, and it’s uncertain whether she and Omar will make it out alive. Bollen does a good job capturing the atmosphere of Cairo while exploring the personalities and experiences of his main characters, but he does so at the expense of pace and action. Readers in search of page-turning adventure may be tempted to skim this one. (Mar.)