Sonderbooks Book Review of The Deeds of the Disturber

Reviewed May 7, 2004.
Atheneum, New York, 1988. 289 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (F PET).
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2004, #6, Mystery and Adventure

The Deeds of the Disturber is the fifth book about Amelia Peabody, Victorian Egyptologist, her eminent husband Radcliffe Emerson, and their precocious son Ramses. This book is much like the others, so I need a few months between reading them, but so far I’ve found them all delightful.

Amelia Peabody is so wonderfully egocentric and completely sure of herself in a day when that wasn’t the norm for women. In this book again she is confronted with a crime and again she doesn’t so much solve it by figuring out the clues as by letting herself get attacked by the criminal.

For a bit of variety, this time the sleuthing is done in London instead of Egypt, with an apparent mummy’s curse from a mummy in the British Museum. These books are great fun, though they are best read in order. Eventually, I hope to catch up and read the new books she keeps writing. I find I can’t read too many of these too close together, but I do want another dose of Amelia Peabody after a few months without her.

Reviews of other books by Elizabeth Peters:

Amelia Peabody Mystery #1: Crocodile on the Sandbank
Amelia Peabody Mystery #2: The Curse of the Pharaohs
Amelia Peabody Mystery #3: The Mummy Case
Amelia Peabody Mystery #4: Lion in the Valley
Ameilia Peabody Mystery #13: Lord of the Silent

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

****The Deeds of the Disturber*

by Elizabeth Peters