Amelia Peabody

To talk about something different than my impending retirement, I’ve been drawn in by the Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. I think several people on my friends list already read these, but for those who don’t at the start of the stories she’s a thoroughly modern Victorian lady, married to an Egyptologist, who has adventures in Egypt and on one occasion in London and Kent.

I was drawn in by the first story, Crocodile on the Sandbank where Amelia meets her best friend Evelyn in Rome, and they travel to Egypt to fall in with Radcliffe Emerson (the Egyptologist) and his philologist brother Walter. Shenanigans of a detective nature ensue while Amelia and Evelyn chase a mummy around the Armana plateau – I forget exactly why, I’ve slept since then.

Amelia is great fun – she’s a feisty heroine who deserves the term and yet doesn’t annoy you – feisty is so often a cover for bad manners and the only bad mannered thing that Amelia does is poke people with her parasol in order to get past. I think she can be forgiven that. Having said that, her habit of dispensing medicines to the Egyptians without a licence rather bothers me, but I suppose it may be something that people did in those days. Thoughts?

I also like the cat Bastet. Doesn’t behave much like a cat, but I like her.

Highly recommended. And there are nineteen of them, so enough to keep one occupied for a long time.