Rosetta Key by William Dietrich (2008)

I was not thrilled with the pace of adventure in this book. Seemed like Ethan Gage was constantly in mortal danger - in front of a firing squad, fleeing for his life, confronting a lion or crocodile, and I kept thinking - not again! Plus he was such a rogue - OK a fairly likable rogue, but still... What I did like was the snippet of history I got from this book. I picked it up, because it was about the Mideast, a part of the world that intrigues me again from Nine Parts of Desire. This takes place in 1798 and 1799, not too many years after the story of Marie Antoinette ends (a recent read), and it describes Napoleon invading Egypt and Palestine, before he became emperor of France. A quick check in the Wikipedia confirms the historical events - Napoleon's wiping out of thousands of people in Jaffa, but that he was unable to take Acre. The main character, Gage, is an American, looking for treasure and an ancient book. He is able to befriend and antagonize everybody - the French, the English, the local inhabitants, but in doing so, we see the story from all of their perspectives. The other intriguing historical piece is that Gage had worked with Ben Franklin, so he was always quoting Franklin, or asking himself what would Franklin do, and Gage was familiar with Franklin's experiments with electricity, which played a role in the novel. I also didn't realize that it was the French this long ago, who found the Rosetta Stone. That has always fascinated me, and it was the one thing I saw both times I was in London in 70's and a few years ago.