Elizabeth Peters: The Deeds of the Disturber (1988)

Edition: MacMillan
Review number: 48

This is the fifth in Peters' series of mysteries featuring a nineteenth century Egyptologist and early feminist Amelia Peabody. The series maintains a lighthearted, humourous tone and is always fun to read. This novel, unusually, takes place in London rather than Egypt. As usual, Emerson and Peabody allow themselves to be dragged into a murder investigation kicking and screaming but really enjoying every minute of it. In this case, the murders are in the British Museum, centred around a particular mummy in the Egyptian collection. A nice little touch, if deliberate, is that the murder is investigated by Inspector Cuff, presumably a promoted Sergeant Cuff from Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone.

The series doesn't rely heavily on knowledge of the earlier books, but it obviously helps to have read at least the first of them. One good thing about Elizabeth Peters is that enjoying any one of her books is a fairly good guide to whether you will enjoy the rest; they are also sufficiently easy-going to be fun to read no matter how tired or ill you might be.