The Gospel Coalition

It is not at all surprising to see the name James Patterson on the list of bestsellers. After all, he has sold an incredible 170 million books over the years, making him one of the bestselling authors of all time. What is surprising, though, is to see Patterson’s name on the non-fiction list. To this point his bestsellers have been novels–the Alex Cross series, the Women’s Murder Club novels, and so on. And yet here he is with The Murder of King Tut, hovering near the top of the non-fiction list.

King Tut is a fascinating character, one of the few ancient kings who is widely-known today. He was a boy king, only nine years old when he became Pharaoh and just eighteen or nineteen when he died. His death has been the cause of much speculation since the discovery of his tomb in 1922. Recent research, based on what appears to be a skull fracture, has put forward the view that Tut was murdered. But Tut’s life is shrouded by the past and history is strangely silent about the events surrounding his death.

This does not stop Patterson from suggesting how he thinks it all happened. Though this book is labeled “non-fiction” and though the cover says it is a “non-fiction thriller” this book is clearly and unapologetically a mix of fact, fiction and speculation. Patterson wraps his interpretation of events in two stories–that of Tut himself and that of Howard Carter, the man who discovered his tomb thousands of years later. Typical for Patterson, the story has mystery, murder, intrigue and a little bit of hanky panky. Where the record is silent, Patterson speaks out, creating an adaptation of history that is all his own. He occasionally seeks to lend his interpretation credibility by writing a page or two about his own research, but really, let’s be honest–this is historical fiction much more than it is a non-fiction thriller. There are thousands of titles in the bookstore written in a similar way to this one and they are all (correctly) labeled as fiction.

While I would not recommend the book as either fact or fiction, I can’t deny that it did provide an opportunity for thought. In a postmodern age, we are often confronted with the very nature of truth. What is truth? What is historical truth? Today it is not unusual to encounter books, labeled as non-fiction, where truth has either been completely fabricated or where speculation, even honest and likely-to-be-true speculation, is passed off as fact. While it is easy to understand this as merely a literary issue, one to be dealt with between an author and publisher, I believe the issues go a little deeper than that. Is truth, and in this case historical truth, fixed? Or can we speculate and do so under the banner of fact? The Murder of King Tut brings these questions to the bestseller list. Unfortunately, it’s brought them to the non-fiction list.

Verdict: Skip it