"A fan favorite that keeps getting better"
By the beginning of 1917, the Great War makes travel
across the Mediterranean unsafe. Still, the archeologist
Peabody-Emerson family journeys from England to Egypt to
begin another season digging up ancient history. However,
their arrival at Luxor is accompanied by the word that
thieves attacked a royal tomb with one of the criminals
left behind dead. Before the matriarch Amelia Peabody Emerson can fully
investigate the crime as she always does, British
intelligence draft her son Ramses to work for them. They
need Ramses to ascertain whether Ismail Pasha, an
individual quickly rising to power in Gaza, is really
Sethos his brother and a criminal. Unable to resist, the
Peabody brood follows Ramses on his trek to keep him safe
and to learn first hand if Sethos has surfaced. Fans of this series will enjoy this mixing of a World
War I espionage tale with a who-done-it. However,
historical mystery readers will feel disappointed as the
intel mission intrudes on the investigation, which is left
dangling while completing the espionage assignment before
the family returns to solve the murder. This leaves the
audience with two distinct story lines that never merge and
a feeling of a novella inset inside a historical amateur
sleuth mystery. Elizabeth Peters provides a wonderful look
into Egyptology during the encroachment of World War I that
along with the fourteenth return of the clan will delight
series fans. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted March 18, 2002
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