Vicky Bliss, assistant curator of the National Museum in Munich, doesn't know a thing about Egyptology. It's her familiarity with larceny that brings an intelligence agency to her office with an offer she can't refuse. They want her as an operative on a luxury Nile cruise because "certain information" has come to their attention - on a dead body - that a major heist of Egyptian antiquities is in the works.

Will Vicky risk her life and all 5'11" of her shapely body in order to stop the thief? Vicky suspects that the man the authorities want is her occasional lover and frequent adversary, the art thief and master of disguise she knows only by one of his many aliases - "Sir John Smythe."

On the first day of the trip, in the shadow of the Sphinx, she does spot him - with a beautiful young girl clinging to his arm. Stunned and furious, Vicky is too pre-occupied with her own feelings to concentrate on crime as the cruise ship sails up the Nile. Of course, she's also distracted by a billionaire offering romance, a gorgeous "sheik" suggesting some very private tours, a pompous Boston professor flattering her ego, and a glamorous American widow giving her beauty tips.

But when another distraction shows up, in the person of her lovable and exasperating boss Herr Dr. Schmidt, and one of the crew is brutally murdered, Vicky realizes that this dream cruise is turning into a nightmare voyage and that everything she cherishes is threatened by perils even worse than death.