Today I want to write about Amelia Peabody’s books, the series that absorbed most of my time in the second half of 2022.
Though I do not remember how I stumbled upon it, I cannot thank enough the caritative soul that recommended it and the author, Elizabeth Peters or Barbara Mertz’s pen name for the series.
Mertz was an American writer, archaeologist, and egyptologist, thus the context for Amelia Peabody’s adventures.
In fact, one of the strong points of the collection is the Mertz background and skills to recount great archaeological discoveries together with 19th and beginning of 20th-century historical events in an entertaining fictional work where a whodunit investigation interweaves with an unusual detective, witty sense of humor and lots of romance under the idyllic Egypt and English culture.
The first novel in the row is Cocodrile on the Sanbank. Although it was to be a single book, the resounding success and great reviews forced Peters to relive Peabody for future intriguing excavations. Again, my infinite love to the promoters. I was a baby to join the public acclaim in 1975, the year of the release.
As you must imagine, Amelia Peabody is the series’s protagonist, a merge between Indiana Jones and Miss Marple of the Victorian era and many characters in one.
She is a strong independent, fearless woman, a loyal friend with great humanity and a no-nonsense attitude, and a scholar with an ability to learn languages and a yearning to travel around the world, a desire she pursues once she inherits from her father.
In the first adventure, Amelia Peabody finds her passions in Egypt, archaeology, and mystery solving, a craving that develops along nineteen books and over thirty years of her family life.
In conclusion, this is your next reading if you have a weakness for cozy mysteries, ancient and modern history, strong females, adventures, humor, and romance.
Enjoy!
