Read: 20 January, 2012Every good detective needs a special trait. Adrian Monk has OCD, Nero Wolfe is overweight, Gilbert Cunningham takes place in Medieval Scotland... Peters' Amelia Peabody is an Egyptologist working in the late 19th - early 20th century.
I've long been something of an amateur Egyptology aficionado (and, in fact, was set on a career in the field for years before the insecurity of puberty put me off any "hard" careers), so I was quite excited to give this mystery series a try. Also, I like to start series at the beginning, but I picked this but up at a sale so I thought I'd give it a try anyway.
In this adventure, a widow and well-known author presents Peabody&co with a "cursed" statuette and claims that a mysterious black afrit killed her husband and is coming after her.
The mystery was fairly blah. The detectives do very little detecting; instead, they spend 2/3 of the novel having things happen to them, and then the culprits confess everything. In the final chapter, it's revealed that Peabody had everything figured out much earlier, but she gave no indication of this at the time.
And, frankly, it's not like the detectives didn't have the chance to do some real detecting - they just sucked at it. For example, two of Peabody's party spend days trying to track down fugitives before they even think of the possibility that the fugitives might not be using their real names!
The writing form was also rather confusing. Some sections were titled "From Manuscript H," but no indication was given as to what this might refer to. I suppose it's possible that this was established in an earlier book, but it was rather weird, especially since there were no other section titles. Peters also made the odd choice of switching back and forth between first person and third, without any real reason for the choice.
All in all, I'd say that this is a fine detective story for a poolside read, but it's not worth seeking out.
Other books in the Amelia Peabody series:
- Crocodile on the Sandbank
- The Curse of the Pharaohs
- The Mummy Case
- Lion in the Valley
- Deeds of the Disturber
- The Last Camel Died at Noon
- The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog
- The Hippopotamus Pool
- Seeing a Large Cat
- The Ape Who Guards the Balance
- Guardian of the Horizon
- A River in the Sky
- The Falcon at the Portal
- He Shall Thunder in the Sky
- Lord of the Silent
- The Golden One
- Children of the Storm
- The Serpent on the Crown
- Tomb of the Golden Bird
FWIW Nero Wolfe isn't just fat, he's agoraphobic, which is why he stays indoors all the time. And of course he's a pompous jerk who takes credit for all the work Archie does...
ReplyDeleteBecause I am also a pompous jerk, I should point out that Agatha Christie's husband was an Egyptologist, so the idea, at least, of being a mystery writer whose subject is Egyptology is really cool in an inside baseball way.
Quite true on Nero Wolfe and I didn't know that about Agatha Christie. Very interesting!
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