All hail the jubilant return of the redoubtable Amelia Peabody! The prospects for the 1907 archaeological season in Egypt seem fairly dull to Amelia Peabody. Her adored husband, Professor Radcliff Emerson, has been ignominiously demoted to examining only the most boring tombs in the Valley of the Kings, mere leftovers really, but they are determined to make the most of a bad situation.
This year, however, the legendary land of the pharaohs will yield more than priceless artifacts, for the desert guards even deeper mysteries that are wrapped in greed - and sealed in murder.
he purchase of a mint condition papyrus of the Famed Book of the Dead, a collection of magical spells and prayers designed to ward off the perils of the underworld, soon has Amelia calling on all her remarkable skills of detection and deduction to untangle a web woven of criminals and cults, stolen treasures, and fallen women - all the while under the unblinking eye of Sethos, the charismatic yet elusive Master Criminal.
Once again, Elizabeth Peters demonstrates the brilliance and wit that have ensured her place in the exclusive pantheon of America's greatest mystery writers.
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"Although I thought that I have by now got used to the tricks of the author, this volume got to me. I cried and laughed through it. Although it started quite slowly, and I wondered how many new twists Peters can come up with, this book is very good in mixing the old and the new. It uses many elements from past volumes and characters from former books suddenly taking on new roles and seen by the narrator in a new light (quite a refreshing feature actually - a little like in life, when you gain a deeped understanding of someone's motives when you spend more and more time with them and it sometime makes you change your mind about them...). But it also introduces new threads and new developments especially concerning the "children", setting the stage for romance and adventures of their own... Nefret, Ramses and David are more and more in the foreground and taking the initiative to ensure the security and wellbeing of the family."
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Zdenka (4 out of 5 stars)