Day: July 26, 2018

Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Missing Scarab

Barnabas Tew, a detective in Victorian London, is having a hard time making a name for himself, probably because most of his clients end up dead before he can solve their cases. His luck is about to change, though, for better or worse: Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, notices him and calls him to the Egyptian underworld. A terrible kidnapping has occurred; one that promises to put an end to the status quo and could perhaps even put an end to the entire world. It is up to Barnabas (along with his trusty assistant, Wilfred) to discover the culprit and set things to right. Can he turn his luck around and solve the most important case of his life?

Purchase Link – mybook.to/Barnabas

Author Bio – Columbkill Noonan lives in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, where she teaches yoga and Anatomy and Physiology.  Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. Her first novel, “Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Missing Scarab” by Crooked Cat Books, was released in 2017, and her latest work, “Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Nine Worlds”, is set to be released in September 2018.

In her spare time, Columbkill enjoys hiking, paddle boarding, aerial yoga, and riding her rescue horse, Mittens. To learn more about Columbkill please feel free to visit her website (www.columbkill.weebly.com), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ColumbkillNoonan) or on Twitter (@ColumbkillNoon1).

Social Media Links –  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ColumbkillNoonan/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/columbkillnoon1?lang=en

Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Missing Scarab

“Barnabas Tew and the Case of the Nine Worlds” is Barnabas Tew’s sophomore adventure, published by Crooked Cat Books (he debuted in last year’s “The Case of the Missing Scarab”) which is currently celebrating its first birthday! In “Nine Worlds”, Barnabas and Wilfred find themselves immersed in Norse mythology, but we aren’t here to talk about that, just yet. No, we are here to celebrate “Missing Scarab”’s birthday, and to talk a bit about Egyptian mythology, not Norse.

Except, of course, for one small point, which is that both of these mythologies have some pretty major thematic elements of angry (or uncaring) gods destroying the world as we know it (or, as Barnabas himself would put it, “I have to save the world, again?”). In Egyptian mythology it’s definitely a case of godly pique, if you will, whilst in Norse mythology it’s more just the natural cycle of things, but still, the end result is the same: world over, so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye. (If this sounds familiar to you, it should: world destruction is a common theme in so many belief systems throughout history. Why humanity should be so, well, obsessed with the end of the world is a topic for another day, though!)

So what happened to end the world in Egyptian mythology, and what on earth (or below it, or above it, as the case might be) does Barnabas Tew have to do with it?

The story goes that Ra, displeased with what he saw as humankind’s ingratitude/lack of piety/arrogance, decided that people must be punished to teach them a lesson. To that end he unleashed Hathor (aka Sekhmet). Hathor was an otherwise rather benevolent deity; being the goddess of fertility, joy, and inspiration she was far more accustomed to bringing people happiness instead of putting an end to them.

Unfortunately for people, though, Hathor apparently had a bit of a temper, too. She took her orders from Ra and ran with them, embarking on a murderous rampage that nearly wiped out humanity before some of the other gods banded together and stopped her by….oh wait, I can’t tell you that, since that particular story plays a bit of a part in “Missing Scarab”. You’ll just have to find out alongside Barnabas, when you read the book!

This, of course, is where Barnabas Tew ties in to this whole “end of the world” thing. You see, the moral of the story seems to be that if humans can’t behave themselves properly, the gods will become angry and put an end to them. Invariably, though, some few survive to tell the tale (because what would be the point of an end-of-the-world story if the world really, truly ended? No one would be there to hear it).

And so it goes: evildoers push the world to the brink, and only intervention by a well-meaning someone will save everyone from certain destruction.

In “The Missing Scarab”, Barnabas is an earnest, well-meaning detective from Victorian London (although, he’s not terribly good at his job, no matter how hard he tries). Rather surprisingly he finds himself recruited by Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead, to solve a case. The stakes?

Why, the end of the world, of course!