While The Andromeda Strain is usually considered to be Michael Crichton's debut, he had already been writing novels under the name John Lange. They are reissued here under his own name at last, and each is a full-fledged example of the techno-thrillers that became his trademark.

Beneath the sands of the Egyptian desert lies treasure beyond imagining, and when a professor of archaeology finds clues to the location of a pharaoh's lost tomb in ancient hieroglyphs, he hatches a plan to find the burial site—and plunder it. But in Crichton's 1970 novel, can a five-man team of smugglers and thieves uncover what the centuries have hidden? And even if they find it, can they keep the secret and escape with their lives?