A few years ago my Mom bought me a new car. Someone was selling a Honda with very few miles on it. My Mom was a firm believer that cars should be named. She asked me what I was going to name my blue Honda with racing stripes and I told her I’d take it out for a spin and let her know. I came back and told her that car’s name was Amelia Peabody. Fortunately I had some of the books with me and we soon decided that the feisty car was perfectly named.
Elizabeth Peters is a pen name of Barbara Mertz. She also writes romance novels under the name of Barbara Michaels. She writes her mysteries under the name of Elizabeth Peters. Born and brought up in Illinois, she earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Mertz was named Grand Master at the inaugural Anthony Awards in 1986 and Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America at the Edgar Awards in 1998. She lives in a historic farmhouse in Frederick, western Maryland.
Because of the shear number of Amelia Peabody books I thought I’d handle them the same way I’m handling the Elis Peter’s Brother Cadfael. I’ll do them in batches as they were written.
Crocodile on the Sandbank is the first Amelia Peabody mystery. It was love at first sight for me with the character. Amelia is in her 30s and it is the late 1890s. Amelia has inherited her father’s fortune and has decided to travel to the places she always wanted to see. The story opens in Rome where she rescues Evelyn Barton-Forbes who has passed out in front of her. Amelia comes to the rescue and decides that Evelyn would make the perfect traveling companion. She ignores Evelyn’s sad story of being seduced and betrayed feeling that it was the man’s fault and shouldn’t stop her enjoyment of Evelyn’s company.
In Egypt Amelia meets the formidable Radcliff Emerson and his brother Walter. The Emerson’s are archeologists and Radcliff has gotten the Egyptian name of “Father of Curses” for his hot temper. Amelia manages to get into an argument with Radcliff from the very start and Evelyn falls for the quiet and shy Walter. After dispatching Evelyn’s despicable ex-lover Alberto and pushing away her cousin Lucas, Amelia starts down the Nile.
The trip reunites Amelia and Evelyn with the Emerson brothers and goes from thwarted love to mummies to the realization that there is a new Master criminal at work. It is simply one of the best introductions to a mystery series that I have ever read.
The Curse of the Pharaohs finds the now married Amelia and Emerson in England and very bored. It also introduces one of the most irritating characters ever written in the form of their son Ramses. Fortunately he doesn’t play a big part in this story. Lady Baskerville comes and pleads with Emerson (he really hates his given name of Radcliff) to take over the excavation of her late husband at Dahshoor. The excavation had been in the popular press as being cursed when Lord Baskerville was found dead and the cause of death could not be found. His assistant Alan Armadale has gone missing.
Amelia is in her element with suspects galore to fire up her detective fever. Brash and cocky Irish tabloid writer Kevin O’Connell tries to get in her good graces without much success. She meets and takes under her wing the archeologists Karl von Bork and the ill Charles Milverton who is not whom he claims. In the course of the story we meet rich American Cyrus Vandergelt and the pitiful Madam Berengeria and her daughter Mary.
The excavation is soon plagued with deaths, talk of curses, and a huge cat. We mustn’t forget the Master Criminal. This mystery was a lot of fun.
The Mummy Case finds Amelia and Emerson and their irritating son Ramses digging in a place that is way beneath their skill as archeologists. They have to put up with the taunting of De Morgan who is excavating quite close where there are pyramids, Amelia’s passion. The story starts in Cairo with the death of a seller of antiquities and Amelia immediately decides that the death was ordered by the Master Criminal. Emerson refuses to believe such a person exists.
At their site the Emersons run into their neighbors at a Copt church and three Missionaries from an American cult. Their footman John falls in love with Sister Charity. Amelia tries to figure out who the Master Criminal really is and who his confederates are and has a plethora of suspects from the Missionaries to a German Baroness to workmen for their dig to rival archeologists. Amelia decides that a Prince of dubious ancestry named Kalenischeff has to work for the Master Criminal.
Mummy cases keep appearing and disappearing in the story. The story has a lion and a close encounter with a pyramid. It is a fun story.
Lion in the Valley sees Amelia, Emerson, and Ramses back in Egypt but this time they are actually at a good site to excavate, Dahshoor. Of course it wouldn’t be Egypt without dead bodies turning up. It appears that Prince Kalenischeff has his eye on a pretty young English heiress named Enid Debenham. While Emerson hopes that this year they can just excavate an attempted kidnapping of Ramses and the murder of Kalenischeff in Enid’s room and her disappearance puts an end to that hope.
It is a book where it seems nobody is who he or she claims to be. An Englishman calling himself Nemo rescues Ramses and is hired by Emerson to look after the boy. Nemo is running way from something and prefers to smoke opium. Amelia vows to rehabilitate them. A mysterious woman faints and is taken in by Amelia. Another man who is a duplicate of Nemo shows up. The Master Criminal who now goes by the name of Sethos makes life difficult for Amelia and Emerson.
The book is fun and at times seems like a Keystone Cops comedy as people change from one persona to another and the true reason Sethos is after Amelia comes out. It is one of my favorite books of the series and is really a lighthearted romp.
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