The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters (1985) — Book #3 in the Amelia Peabody Series

Some friends in China were moving recently, so naturally I went to help clean out their bookshelves! Among some books on prayer, I picked up two books by Elizabeth Peters whom I had never read before, books which I reserved for my plane rides. After this first taste of Peters, I’ll admit it: I’m a fan.

Although The Mummy Case is the third book of twenty in the Amelia Peabody Series, I had no choice but to start here. Sure, there’s a moderate backstory discussed in the early pages of this book, but Peters does well to re-introduce new readers to her fascinating, adventurous characters.

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Brief Overview of The Mummy Case

The entire manuscript of this book (and I’m sure all the others in the series) supposedly comes from the personal memoirs of Amelia Peabody—Egyptologist, amateur detective, and wife of the famous archaeologist, Radcliffe Emerson. Together with their son, Ramses (whom I’ll get to in a moment), they head back for a digging season in Egypt to work a claim that’s not all that promising.

It’s less the dig itself and more the goings on of their region (and the people they meet along the way) that give life and danger to this story. Particularly, it’s the mysterious “master criminal” who may be leading a host of grave robberies and—gasp!—even murders.

An Engaging Author Hitting Her Stride

Peters includes so many well-drawn characters and plot intricacies in this novel that, through all points of the book, I knew I was in the care of an incredibly considerate author. Perhaps that’s only because this was an early work, and (in my ignorance) I’m not aware that her writing sloughed off over the decades. Perhaps not.

I don’t really care at this point, because this, my first taste of her writing, was delectable. Peters’ intentionality in the craft was palpable, and it reminded me of the early works of many other authors of pop-fiction.

Of course, this might be a completely subjective take, but I feel there’s a process for this kind of “pop” author. While their first few books may be weak in plot and not always take off, they eventually hit their stride by their fifth-or-so novel. They then maintain that momentum of thick plots and strong characters for another 10-20 or even 30 novels, before losing steam or (worse) getting so popular that they get into co-authoring for the sake of sales.

• The Shining was Stephen King‘s 6th or 7th novel and still among his greatest works, but after writing so many more hits, he eventually became so prolific (and even political) that he certainly lost his edge as “king” of the horror-thriller genre.
• Raise the Titanic was Clive Cussler‘s third publication and definitely his breakout novel. He continued with well-crafted adventure novels across several series, but the plots eventually felt so formulaic, that I felt they weren’t worth reading anymore. He also co-authored so many in the end, that I felt like I wasn’t even reading Cussler anymore.
• The Andromeda Strain was Michael Crichton‘s 5th novel and still among his most popular (though I personally hated it). He kept writing and was still hugely popular in the 1990s with his Jurassic series, though many of the plots and “science” miscues of his other novels were so unbelievable that I think his name was more popular than his books.
• The Mummy Case is Elizabeth Peters’ 10th book, though admittedly, my only taste.

A Very Interesting Series of Characters

I loved Peters’ angle of introducing us to this world through Amelia’s own memoirs, her recollections of things as they happened yet after the fact while sitting at her typewriter. She describes her husband tenderly and with great affection—and we know all about their healthy marriage through innuendo. Several times.

The other side characters were colorful enough to remember and either loathe or admire. The missionaries were a real piece of work, and I’ll get to them shortly. The locals were a mixture of brutes and friends, and I felt like Amelia was a “modern woman” with anti-racist sentiments about half-a-century before her time—and it’s pretty obvious why.

But the star of the show was Ramses, the supposed 4yo genius who initially annoyed the crap out of me, until I finally gave up all common sense and just went with the flow. In fact, in the beginning of the book, he was so thoroughly described as a devil that I was ready to hate him— and when I finally I did meet him in the book, I did hate him!  I can’t even begin to explain how grown-up this child speaks to his parents, while running off to the library to learn Coptic so he can decipher some parchments he’s discovered on his excavations.

Ramses is most certainly an adult trapped in a child’s body. His own mother calls him “My annoyingly well-informed son” (261) and writes:

Ramses is the only person I know who can get dirty sitting perfectly sill in a church. (156)

I found eventual comfort in considering a Benjamin Button-type character—someone so unbelievable that you just have to accept it and move on.

The initial annoyances made me wonder if I was dealing with another book like O-Zone by Paul Theroux, a book I simply couldn’t finish because of the over-the-top teenaged character. But Ramses’ quirks were eventually endearing, and his part in the story (which was once merely a side-show) eventually became he main act. I’m glad I didn’t give up on him.

A Skewed Sense of Mission Work?

If you know me and know this story, then it won’t surprise you that I wasn’t a huge fan of the author’s depiction of missionaries in the 1920s. Of course, the missionaries she described ended up being raving lunatics and heretics besides, but that late knowledge didn’t damper the protagonists’ initial feelings, like this from Emerson:

“No one slaughters a coreligionist with quite as much enthusiasm as a Christian, my dear. Look at their history.” I made no comment on this, for in fact I could think of nothing to say. (155)

This sentiment made me at first think of James Michener‘s novel Hawaii, in which he blames virtually all of the islands’ historical woes on the woolen-clad missionaries!

Eventually, however (and I supposed this is a bit of a spoiler alert), we learn that Brother Ezekiel’s band of “Christians” dubbed “The Brothers of Jerusalem” were wholly unorthodox and actually following a false Messiah—Brother Ezekiel himself! (289) Peters writes of this twisted clan of missionaries:

The Brothers of Jerusalem…give all Christian missionaries a bad name with their tactless behavior. (224)

Brother Ezekiel was the most irritating man in the world and, in my opinion, wholly unfit for the profession he had embraced; but the missionaries were performing a worthwhile task, particularly with the ignorant and ignored little girls. Coptic women were no better off than their Muslim sisters. If the missionaries did nothing else, they might be the salvation of the women of Egypt. (285)

So at least in the end the missionaries did something well and they were called out for their hypocrisy not their charity.

Conclusion

Overall, I found Elizabeth Peters an engaging and (as importantly) clean author worth reading again. I’m a bit surprised by this, actually, since from the thrift-store shelves she appears to have been as prolific as James Patterson! She’s witty, engaging, thoughtful, and clean—if not biblically orthodox (judging by her very Dan-Brown-like final chapters)—and she’s worth a revisit.

For the full chronological list her books, I’m heading to BookNotification.com and encourage you to do the same for all your favorite authors!

©2026 E.T.

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