The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters

I love the Amelia Peabody mysteries and I'm so happy there are like 20 of them. This is book three so there might be some slight spoilers just in the nature of the characters, but not the plots of books one and two.

Amelia Peabody Emerson has mostly resigned herself to being a doting English wife and mother instead of prowling the sands of Egypt as an archeologist when her husband surprises her with a chance to dig at the pyramids of Dashoor. She is ecstatic but soon comes to realize that nothing about the trip is going to go right. Firstly, her husband has ostracized the entire Egyptology community with his abrasive opinions and their petition for Dashoor is denied, leaving them the much less interesting Mazghunah to excavate. Secondly, their local workforce is at odds with a splinter religious group led by the odious Brother Ezekiel, putting the Emerson family square in the middle of that drama. Thirdly, there is a series of murders and thefts of antiquities that seem to revolve around a scrap of papyrus and a mummy case that vanishes and reappears sporadically. And lastly, their son Ramses is a walking, talking force of chaos. How is a good English personality to cope with such inconvenient and distressing phenomena? Common sense, deductive reasoning, and tea, of course.

Like I said, I'm a fan of this series. I think the characters are hilarious and I especially love the interactions between Emerson and Peabody, including the fact that even though they are married, they still refer to each other by their last names. The only thing I didn't like about this novel was the depiction of Amelia's relationship with her son. I know it's meant to be funny and play against the stereotype of the maternal figure by having Emerson more emotionally attached to the boy, but it reads like Amelia just straight up dislikes her child. She is constantly ignoring, disparaging, and dismissing Ramses' interests and contributions to the point where it almost seems abusive. It's not a major part of the novel over all but it left kind of a sour taste in my mouth. I really hope there's some sort of accommodation reached between them by the next book.

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