I was flattered that the cat stayed with me; always before she had seemed to prefer Emerson. No doubt her keen intelligence told her that the truest friend is not always the one who offers chicken.[loc. 9086]
Amelia Peabody Emerson and her redoubtable husband are off to Egypt again, after five years in England. They leave their little son Ramses in the tender care of Emerson's brother Walter and his lovely wife Evelyn. Both leap at the opportunity to excavate what might be an undisturbed royal tomb -- and given Amelia's predilection for crime-solving, it probably doesn't hurt that the discoverer of the tomb, Sir Henry Baskerville, died in mysterious circumstances.
Egypt is certainly a contrast to their sedate life in Kent. There is a vexing reporter, an American Egyptologist, the bereaved Lady Baskerville, a young man who spends most of the novel in a coma, and Madame Berengeria, who drinks a lot to assuage the Eternal Pain stemming from being the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian Queen. (Emerson is apparently her long-lost love.) There is a great deal of skulduggery, a romance that seems to be doomed, and a number of superstitious individuals --
Egyptian and otherwise -- who would rather Emerson and Amelia did not excavate the tomb, which is (of course) cursed.
Amelia is as delightfully cynical as ever ('the fact that she had not yet exterminated her mother proved that she was incapable of violence') and manages to retain her air of competence by never quite admitting when she's wrong.
I have to say I didn't enjoy this as much as Crocodile on the Sandbank: but I had already committed myself, via the four-book omnibus edition, to the series. Curse of the Pharaohs is entertaining, fast-paced and often very funny: it introduces characters who will be significant later in the series: but Amelia did not charm me quite as much as on first acquaintance.
Also, I note that in Elizabeth Peters' books, overweight individuals are seldom on the side of good -- whether neutral or actively villainous.
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