By Elizabeth Peters. Copyright 1988 (reprint), Mysterious Press.

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I liked the first book in Elizabeth Peters' series of Egyptian mystery novels enough to wonder what's been happening with Victorian-era heroine Amelia Peabody since then, so I picked up the second book in the series, Curse of the Pharaohs. It picks up a few years later, with Amelia and Emerson living the standard life back in dreary old England. Emerson teaches at a university, and Amelia busies herself trying to contain their rambunctious and intensely irritating young son, Ramses. Both Emerson and Amelia find the grind of daily life nearly unbearable, and they frequently dream of returning to the life of excavation and adventure they left behind when they married and started a family. When young Lady Baskerville arrives and offers Emerson a chance to take over a potentially historic excavation in the Valley of the Kings, which was left unfinished when her husband died mysteriously, he and Peabody are torn between their allegiance to family and their yearning a return to their old life. Luckily, Ramses is obnoxious enough to make the decision easier, and our heroic duo soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that involves shifty Irishmen, cranky Germans, boisterous Americans, and big fat crazy ladies who dress up like ancient Egyptians and ramble on about past lives. Binding them all together -- the tomb, a ghostly apparition that keeps drifting around the camp, and the usual murder most foul.

I liked Crocodile on the Sandbank, and there's nothing about Curse of the Pharaohs to keep me from liking it just as much. I was initially fearful of the introduction of the proverbial precocious child, this being possibly the most odious invention in the history of both cinema and literature, and little Ramses certainly is grating on the nerves. I do appreciate, however, that our leading lady -- the child's mother -- frequently hints at the fact that she find shim just as irritating. And luckily, the young brat is left behind quickly as the plot shifts to Egypt. Author Peters surrounds the two leads with a virtual who's who of classic whodunit literature: the pushy reporter, the maiden in distress, the not-so-grieving widow, the young man who is not who he claims to be, and plenty of others, each one of them with motivation enough to be behind the spat of killings surrounding the opening of the tomb and resulting in the rise of stories about a pharaoh's curse.

As with the previous novel, the reader will probably be able to ascertain the guilty party far in advance of the revelation of the killer's identity, but that doesn't stop the story from being a highly entertaining and absorbing journey. The interaction between the boorish but likeable Emerson and the haughty, cocksure Amelia is still strong, and the supporting characters are interesting (including a couple who return from the previous novel). Amelia Peabody continues to walk the line between insufferably sure of herself and genuinely capable, with a couple comedic episodes highlighting the occasional gulf between her actual abilities and her high opinion of her abilities. Attention to period detail -- both Victorian and ancient Egyptian -- is as sharp as one would expect, helping flesh out a developing literary universe that continues to be worth visiting.

Labels: Espionage