but it's a DNF for me.

too bad.  It has ancient Egypt, antiquities, a mystery and time travel.  I should love it, but it isn't working for me.

two of the reasons are in earlier posts, here and here;  but generally it was eye-rolling and irritating without anything good to make up for it, and I've had enough.  I know there's another five star read somewhere in my TBR, And I'm off to locate it.

. . . , but this one has me flummoxed.

is it possible that a person who is thirty right now, could have grown up without having  encountered a splinter accident.  Have we really come so far?

Detective Gina has been kidnapped and locked in a room.

She had run her fingers over everything in the room, collecting a splinter from the windowsill in the process. The jab of the splinter— she worried about a possible infection— and the drops of blood as she finally removed the sliver and sucked at the wound, weren’t anything she’d ever experienced.

seriously?

And this one has time travel. score!

but the lead detective is a female, and the author is male.  I'm not sure, but I think I'm starting to have a problem with his portrayal of the detective.  First of all, I'm in chapter two and she's already mentioned "her girlish figure" twice.

then she goes to a restaurant frequented by the murder victim to interview the manager, and this happens:

Gina dug through her purse trying to find the envelope with Steve Robinson’s picture in it. Finally she just emptied her purse on the table: newspaper, her pistol with two spare clips, wallet, notebook and pen, a romance novel, a book of crossword puzzles, a croissant from Starbucks that was a couple of days old and should probably be thrown out, her compact, hairbrush and comb, lipstick, keys, ID folder with her badge, chap stick, breath mints, a handful of loose change, and, finally, down at the bottom, the elusive envelope.

See what I mean?  Besides, I wish he used her last name; Gina sounds too casual.

but, enough of that.  I'm probably getting to the good part now.