The Hidden Sphinx: A Tale of World War II Egypt

by Zita Steele

Egypt, 1942. War rages in the Western Desert. As a series of murders and tomb robberies plague the British Army, ruthless and daring Major Desmond Frost is called to investigate. His path leads him straight into the arms of fiery young American woman Eve, who captures his heart as he unlocks a mystery surrounding tomb raids, an ancient haunted dagger, and a renegade German Afrika Korps ranger. The darkness pits him against a Nazi spree killer and and the East London leader of “Commando Group Sphinx,” elite Special Forces troopers gone rogue.

351 pages, Paperback

Published October 7, 2019

About the author

Zita Ballinger Fletcher is an award-winning author, editor and military historian. She is currently a Master’s Degree student of Military History. She writes fiction and nonfiction, has published more than 10 books, and writes military history articles and book reviews. She is also a photographer, graphic designer and video producer; she designs and illustrates her published books. She often writes using the creative pen name Zita Steele. Her areas of military history interest & research include the Vietnam War and World Wars I & II, with particular focus on Great Britain, Germany, and Eastern Europe.

Zita is fluent in German and became the author of the first published collection of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s wartime photography, a groundbreaking military history book series, which she first started working on after a visit to the U.S. National Archives when she was 15 years old. The first two books in the series were published in 2015, with a third and fourth volume released in years following. The series is ongoing.

Zita’s writing has appeared in many history publications including Military History magazine, Military History Quarterly (MHQ), World War II magazine, Vietnam magazine, the Bulletin of the Military Historical Society (U.K.), the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, the Abraham Lincoln Association’s “For the People” newsletter, and others.

She is an experienced public speaker and has given numerous presentations about her academic research and military history topics for various groups.

She has been recognized with awards as a writer and editor. The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) presented Zita with a Media and Entertainment Award in 2022 for her accomplishments in history publishing and videography. In 2022 she received a 2nd Place national award for Editing from the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), in addition to previous awards from NFPW for history writing and videos. In 2020, the Military Writers Society of America (MWSA) awarded Zita a Silver Medal for History for her book “Bernard Montgomery’s Art of War,” and a Bronze Medal for Historical Fiction for her novel “The Hidden Sphinx: A Tale of World War II Egypt” – making Zita a winner in both nonfiction and fiction categories.

She has also been recognized for outstanding academic achievements. Zita won her first award as an artist in 1996, coming in 3rd Place in a statewide art competition. She became a district Spelling Bee champion at age 13 in 2004 and received a National Merit Scholarship Commendation in 2009. She received a Magna Cum Laude degree in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the University of South Florida in 2013, where she attended the Honors College for academically gifted students.

Zita has done military history research in person at numerous museums and historic institutions in the U.S. and abroad, including:

• The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg
• The Nuremberg Trials Memorial
• The Museum of Military History in Vienna, Austria
• The Smithsonian National Museum of American History
• The Topography of Terror (Gestapo Museum) in Berlin
• The Munich Stadtmuseum
• Numerous battlefields, forts and war memorials

Zita was named after Empress Zita of Austria, the wife of the last Habsburg emperor, Karl I, by her mother who was inspired by the empress’s courage described in a 1989 obituary. Later on, Zita was impressed by the life story of her namesake’s husband, Karl I of Austria. Both Karl and his wife Zita have been an inspiration to her and an important part of her life, which she has described in a book she wrote about Karl.

Zita’s passion in life has always been military history. “One of the main reasons I love military history is because it is filled with courage, leadership and self-sacrifice. I like to learn about feats of bravery and strength. There is also a lot of warmth and humor among soldiers. I admire stories of brotherhood and great

Reviews

[Military Writers Society of America (MWSA)]

MWSA Review

Author Zita Steele has given us a delightful story of suspense and romance in her book, The Hidden Sphinx, A Tale of World War II Egypt. Steele sets the story in and around Cairo during the early part of the war, and effectively weaves into her book the ancient history and landmarks of the region. The story's two protagonists meet in Cairo: Major Frost, the no-nonsense British Army investigator, and Eve Weathers, an American journalist. The two work together to find the murderer of a British officer. The trail leads them throughout the Egyptian desert, in and out of several ruins, and has them on a hunt, not only for the murderer, but also for a cursed, ancient embalming knife. Their chase takes them into conflict with German soldiers, various tomb raiders, and deserters from both sides of the conflict. With wisps of the supernatural always dancing around the edges of the story, Eve and Frost still find time to fall in love. The question is, will either survive to the end of the story? I recommend this book.

Review by Bob Doerr (April 2020)

[Bob Mustin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A new writer who embarks on a novel will usually learn the art of narrative first, and, given that she has a grand story to tell, will let the story emerge through her voice. The thing that sometimes gets lost in the marathon race that is authoring a novel is character.  Stories – especially tales of derring-do in wartime – don't  happen of themselves. Only in history books does it seem that way. Humans – flawed people, ambitious people, people caught in the jaws of conflict – create stories.

Ms. Steele has done a commendable job of researching the World War II background for her story, and has presented an unusual situation in The Hidden Sphinx: both British and German soldiers gone rogue, both being hunted by military detective sorts. And, of course, who couldn't want a romance thrown in? The author has realized the central role of character in a dramatic saga such as this, but seems to have struggled to capture it.

Well developed characters, given even the smallest, most insignificant conflict, will make great things happen as they chase resolution. After all, the novel is a literary device by which we learn about life. It's the characters, the surrender to an evil more vile than war's destruction, the resolve, the pluck to survive in an inhospitable desert, the inevitability of love, even in a war that pits combatants against one another and against nature herself, that give the story its life, its power. It's evident that Ms Steele has the panorama of a great epic in her. Her task now is to unearth the characters worthy of living that story.



My rating: 12 of 20