Crocodile on the Sandbank/Elizabeth Peters

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody mysteries, book 1); mystery, historical fiction; 273 pages

I started reading this series because I so much enjoyed Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series, and had heard from many, many people that the main characters of those books are essentially reworkings of Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson from Peters’ mysteries (that’s very true, by the way: I can totally see Amelia and Alexia sitting down to tea in some alternate Victorian London and snarking about men, society, and parasols. But I digress.) I had also been told by many other sources that this series was worth checking out--so here I am.

This story opens with Amelia in Italy, en route to Cairo. Her father’s death has left her a wealthy, well-educated (and very opinionated) spinster of 32, and she’s decided to do what she always wanted: see Egypt. Along the way, she befriends an honorable-but-disgraced noblewoman and the prickly gentleman archaeologist, Radcliffe Emerson (though maybe “befriends” is the wrong word to use here—Amelia and Emerson are both so stubborn that all they do is fight). While visiting Emerson’s dig, the group finds themselves haunted by a mysterious figure that appears to be a walking mummy, bent on destroying the dig. Amelia sets out to uncover the culprit behind the apparition, while studying the rudiments of archaeology along the way.

I loved this book for so many reasons: The Egyptology is accurate (as it should be: Peters is the pen name of a successful Egyptologist), which is important to me in a book like this. Having an introduction to Eyptology helped, but Peters explains things well enough that even a person with no previous knowledge of the field should be able to pick it up. And yet Peters never goes in for the info-dump; the story sails along smoothly, and Amelia and Emerson’s constant bickering/flirting adds just enough romance to keep it interesting, without turning into an all-out romance. And Amelia and Emerson throw some one-liners into the story that had me laughing out loud. To make it even better, the book was set at Amarna, one of my favorite places in Egyptian history.

I should mention, though, that there were some elements of the book I enjoyed less: Amelia-as-narrator tends to take a very Imperialist view of the Egyptian people that often made me uncomfortable, despite the fact that such opinions fit her time period and character. I think I could have gotten around it, but I really liked Amelia otherwise, and every time she made some condescending comment about the non-British characters, I questioned whether I should like her. I reminded myself that this book was written almost 40 years ago, so maybe later entries in this series will be more enlightened. I definitely going to keep going with the series to see how it progresses.