Clinton, South Carolina, Thursday, March 8, 2018, 9:03 a.m.

Imagine Professor Indiana Jones, only damaged by the trauma of the Great War.

Imagine the alternative “Indy,” deeply neurotic and wearing a half-mask to hide the part of his face disfigured fighting the Germans, for whom he understandably bears a grudge. He moves to Cairo, purchases a grand house and operates an antiquities shop out of it. He is a learned man.

Meet Augustus Wall, the principal character in Sean McLachlan’s The Case of the Purloined Pyramid. It’s the first in the author’s new series, The Masked Man of Cairo.

Wall enlists the help of another learned man, Moustafa Ghani, whom he finds while investigating an archeological dig. Moustafa is a proud, self-educated Soudanese, both respectful of the ruling British and resentful of their condescension. Then is there Faisal, a resourceful young beggar of the streets, who proves useful on occasion though Augustus and Moustafa try in vain to be rid of him.

Meanwhile, the evil nemeses are familiar. A band of Germans is seeking ancient secrets that will restore their beleaguered nation to what they perceive to be its rightful place. These Germans rather presage the Nazis. They believe Aryan supremacy is rooted in the Great Pyramids of Giza, and they will go to any length to uncover the secrets that lie beneath them.

When the bullets start flying, Augustus has a disquieting tendency to succumb to flashbacks of the horrors he experienced in the trenches of Europe. Moustafa learns to shake him back to his senses. Together they craft a tale of delightful, if often reluctant, cohesion, set amidst a panorama of foreign intrigue and revolutionary tumult.

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