Thy Dross to Consume

The fifth book in the Mark Pacer Series.

An American lies in a coma in a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, after a car plowed into him on a city street. The driver of the car claims someone pushed the seventy-year-old man into his path.

Mark Pacer, an American consular officer from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, is tasked with contacting the man’s next of kin. So far, his efforts have ended in failure. The stateside number listed in the injured man’s U.S. passport has been disconnected.

Then another American is murdered by a lone gunman. Could the driver of the car that hit the old man be correct? Could a terrorist have pushed him into the path of the car? Or is the driver himself possibly a terrorist sympathizer?

Yet, for Mark, stumbling to find his way after a recent loss, the issue becomes simply a helpless old man. No one, it seems, knows him, in Egypt or in the States. Finding someone who cares about this man becomes a pilgrimage for Mark, .

A childhood within a dysfunctional Appalachian church has offered little spiritual fiber for Mark to battle his loss. He spews out his anguish to Tadros, an Egyptian friend, a Coptic Christian, their numbers shrunken from ancient times. Yet Tadros offers a perspective unknown to Mark, raised in a johnny-come-lately American variety of the faith.

The untangling of the hospitalized American’s life provides insight for Mark—just as another crisis threatens to undo everything Mark has learned.

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