Paul Sussman Books in Order

If you want his main Egypt-set thrillers: The Lost Army of Cambyses → The Last Secret of the Temple → The Labyrinth of Osiris
If you like desert adventure standalones: The Hidden Oasis
If you prefer darkly comic character studies: The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix
If you're curious about his journalism and early work: Death by Spaghetti

Paul Sussman was an English novelist, journalist, and field archaeologist whose thrillers grew out of a genuine love of ancient history and the modern Middle East. He was born Paul Nicholas Sussman in Beaconsfield in July 1966, the only child of Stanley, a textile sales manager, and Sue, a former actress who later became a psychoanalyst. After early years in Hampstead, the family moved to Northwood in north-west London, which he regarded as home.

Sussman went to Merchant Taylors' School and then studied history at St John's College, Cambridge. At university he won a Joseph Larmor Award, earned a boxing blue, and even fronted a student band with the memorable name Dr and the Glasscocks.

After graduating he drifted into journalism. He joined The Big Issue as a feature writer and film editor, and began a sharply observed satirical column called 'In the News', which later won a Columnist of the Year award and became the basis for his first book, the non-fiction collection Death by Spaghetti.

Freelance pieces followed for many other outlets, from national newspapers to magazines and broadcast news organisations, and he developed a knack for spotting odd stories and human detail in everyday events.

At the same time he kept going back to the field. Archaeology had fascinated him since childhood, and he spent several seasons in Egypt working with the Amarna Royal Tombs Project in the Valley of the Kings, where he helped excavate Tomb KV56 and unearthed rare items of pharaonic jewellery, the first such find there since Tutankhamun's tomb was uncovered in 1922.

That mix of long days on site, night-time note taking, and a deep affection for Egypt fed directly into the novels he would later write.

His early book Death by Spaghetti gathers bizarre but true stories from his satirical column, but it was his move into archaeological thrillers that brought him a large international audience. The Lost Army of Cambyses introduced Egyptian detective Yusuf Khalifa and combined modern murders with the legend of a vanished Persian army in the western desert.

He followed it with The Last Secret of the Temple, The Hidden Oasis, and The Labyrinth of Osiris, novels that leap between eras and countries but stay anchored in contemporary Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. Readers tend to come for the elaborate puzzles and stay for the grounded character work, tense investigations, and the feeling that the archaeological detail has been carefully dug, not guessed.

The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix shows a different side again, a darkly funny, backwards-told life story narrated by a man preparing to kill himself at the turn of the millennium, written long before his thrillers but finally published after his death.

Across this body of work Sussman's novels have been translated into more than thirty languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, and one British newspaper memorably called his thrillers 'the intelligent reader's answer to The Da Vinci Code'.

Sussman died suddenly in London in May 2012 after a ruptured aneurysm, aged forty-five, leaving his wife, a television producer, and their two young sons. His mix of on-the-ground archaeology, newsroom experience, and curiosity means new readers still find their way to his books through desert mysteries, political thrillers, or that very odd final testimony scrawled across the walls of a castle.