Elizabeth Peters’s 1981 novel The Curse of the Pharaohs is the second in her Amelia Peabody mysteries. At her death there were nineteen books in the series; a twentieth was completed in 2017 four years after her death. This is the fourth I’ve read (the others were 1-The Crocodile on the Sandbank, 3-The Mummy Case, and 6-The Last Camel Died at Noon); clearly you don’t have to read them in sequence, though you may miss some back-references by not doing so. They’re thoroughly enjoyable with two strong main characters, wryly comic in tone yet interlaced with oodles of fascinating archaeological detail.

This first-person story narrated by Amelia occurs in 1892. Dear reader, she has married Emerson, the professor she met in the first book. ‘Five years of marriage have taught me that even if one is unamused by the (presumed) wit of one’s spouse, one does not say so... Emerson is a remarkable person, considering that he is a man. Which is not saying a great deal’ (p2). They’re Egyptologists but stuck in a rut – family life and a young precocious son, Walter, known as Ramses taking up their time. However, their ennui is about to be relieved by the arrival of Lady Baskerville whose husband died under bizarre circumstances while on a dig in Egypt.

Before long they have deposited Ramses with relatives and head for Egypt and Lady Baskerville’s

Dig. Lady Baskerville: ‘There was no colour in her cheeks, but her mouth was a full rich scarlet. The effect of this was startling in the extreme; one could not help thinking of the damnably lovely lamias and vampires of legend’ (p26).

The married pair are constantly at loggerheads. ‘ "I never raise my voice," Emerson bellowed’ (p108). Though invariably they kiss and make up at the end of the argument (most of which Amelia wins). ‘My suggestion that I call my maid to help me out of my frock was not well received. Emerson offered his services. I pointed out that his method of removing a garment often rendered that garment unserviceable thereafter. This comment was greeted with a wordless snort of derision and a vigorous attack upon the hooks and eyes. After all, much as I commend frankness in such matters, there are areas in which an individual is entitled to privacy. I find myself forced to resort to a typographical euphemism’ (p38). In short, three asterisks (for a scene break).

There are plenty of suspects, of course. They meet up with Mr Milverton, a photographer who has an air of mystery about him; Karl von Bork, ‘I was not surprised to find him prompt at his meals; his contours indicated that a poor appetite was not one of his difficulties’ (p66); American Cyrus Vandergelt; the overbearing Madame Berengeria and her artist daughter Mary; and journalist O’Connell.

Despite superstition threatening the dig, our erstwhile characters go ahead: ‘... crystalline powder, clinging to the men’s perspiring bodies, gave them a singularly uncanny appearance; the pallid, leprous forms moving through the foggy gloom resembled nothing so much as reanimated mummies, preparing to menace the invaders of their sleep’ (p153).

Another murder and a poisoning add to the mystery. Throughout Amelia’s narrative we’re treated to suspense and amusement with a dash of tension and delightful colourful descriptions. ‘Alarm seized me. Emerson never speaks French unless he is up to something.  “You are up to something,” I said’ (p223).

I have several more unread books in the series about this indomitable Victorian sleuth piled on a shelf. Something to look forward to in due course.

Elizabeth Peters is the pen-name of Barbara Mertz (1927-2013) with a PhD in Egyptology. She also wrote as Barbara Michaels.

The first Amelia Peabody novel, Crocodile on the Sandbank, was published in 1975.  I read her third and sixth adventures (The Mummy Case and The Last Camel Died at Noon, respectively) in 2001, and enjoyed them immensely. Thereafter I collected four more adventures over the years but have only now got round to reading them. There are twenty books in the series.

Narrated in the first person by Amelia, it is a light-hearted period piece beginning in 1880: her father has died, leaving her a wealthy woman – she was ‘visited by streams of attentive nieces and nephews assuring me of their devotion – which had been demonstrated, over the past years, by their absence... A middle-aged spinster – for I was at that time thirty-two years of age, and I scorned to disguise the fact – who has never received a proposal of marriage must be a simpleton if she fails to recognise the sudden acquisition of a fortune as a factor in her new popularity. I was not a simpleton. I had always known myself to be plain’ (p4).

Elizabeth Peters gets the tone just right – an emancipated and forthright woman in a man’s world.

She was keen to travel, her ultimate destination being Egypt. While en route, in Rome her chaperone, Miss Pritchett fell ill and returned to England. By chance, Amelia helps a destitute young woman in the street; Evelyn Barton-Forbes has been ruined and abandoned by her callous lover Alberto: ‘She was English, surely; that flawless white skin and pale-golden hair could belong to no other nation... The features might have been those of an antique Venus or young Diana’ (p10). Evelyn becomes Amelia’s companion and they travel to Egypt. Evelyn ‘was too kind, and too truthful. Both, I have found, are inconvenient character traits’ (p77).

Amelia needed to obtain certain supplies to sail on the Nile. ‘If I had not been a woman, I might have studied medicine; I have a natural aptitude for the subject, possessing steady hands and far less squeamishness about blood and wounds than many males of my acquaintance. I planned to buy a few small surgical knives also; I fancied I could amputate a limb – or at least a toe or finger – rather neatly if called upon to do so’ (p44).

Before long the pair encounter two archaeologists – the Emerson brothers: gruff, bearded irascible giant Radcliffe and the amiable Walter. Radcliffe Emerson reminded me of Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger.

It is obvious that Amelia and Radcliffe spark off each other, two strong wills competing: ‘Peabody had better retire to her bed; she is clearly in need of recuperative sleep; she has not made a sarcastic remark for fully ten minutes’ (p242).

Her nursing skills are needed more than once. ‘I tore up my petticoat in order to fasten his arm to his body so that it would not be jarred unnecessarily. He had his wicked temper back by then, and made a rude remark. “As you would say, my lord, it is just like one of Mr Haggard’s romances. The heroine always sacrifices a petticoat at some point in the proceedings. No doubt that is why females wear such ridiculous garments; they do come in useful in emergencies’ (p168).

The Emerson dig is sabotaged, there are strange, possibly supernatural, things going on, and Evelyn seems at great risk... An enjoyable historical romance and mystery.

Elizabeth Peters is the pen-name of Barbara Mertz and also wrote as Barbara Michaels; she received her PhD in Egyptology in 1952. She died in 2013, aged 85.