Crocodile on the Sandbank and Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

It has happened at last – I have finally made Ms Amelia Peabody’s acquaintance, and I’m happy to report that we got along splendidly. Crocodile on the Sandbank and Curse of the Pharaohs are the first two books in the Amelia Peabody series – a series of historical mysteries set in Egypt in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries involving archaeology, adventures, the absurdities of Victorian mores, romance, and a good deal of humour. When we first meet Ms Peabody, she’s a strong-willed, unconventional, parasol-carrying Lady of Independent Means who’s using her fortune to travel through Europe and North Africa. Her recently deceased father, a scholar, gave her a much more complete education than what was customary for women at the time, and this inspired her interest in ancient history and art.

In Rome, Amelia Peabody makes the acquaintance of one Ms Evelyn Barton-Forbes. Evelyn is, as Amelia soon discovers, a Fallen Woman. But Amelia, an early feminist, doesn’t believe in such a concept, and is therefore not in the least inclined to shun her new friend. Crocodile on the Sandbank won me over immediately by having two Victorian ladies talk about sexuality before the end of the second chapter. And no, this doesn’t mean the novels are historically inaccurate, as it’s absurd to assume that the subject was never privately discussed between curious ladies at the time. It’s just that, for obvious enough reasons, the literature of the period couldn’t really report these exchanges. This is actually one of the reasons why I’m a fan of historical fiction: it can tell us all the things that contemporary writers were forced to be silent about.

It’s a little difficult to sum up the plot of the second book, Curse of the Pharaohs, without spoiling the first, so I’m going to refrain from doing so. I’ll just tell you that both novels are set in Egypt; that the mysteries involve mummies, ancient curses, skulduggery, or all of the above; that they feel a bit like adventure stories, much more so than whodunits; and that the main characters, Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson, are an absolute delight. With this out of the way, I’ll go on to explain what I like about the series in general without spoiling the plot of either book.

Both books are narrated in the first person, and Amelia’s voice is one of this series’ greatest strengths: she’s witty, sarcastic and very personable, and her ironic and confidential tone immediately draws readers in. Take this paragraph, for example, which opens Curse of the Pharaohs:

The events I am about to relate began on a December afternoon, when I had invited Lady Harold Carrington and certain of her friends to tea.
Do not, gentle reader, be misled by this introductory statement. It is accurate (as my statements always are); but if you expect the take that follows to be one of pastoral domesticity, enlivened only by gossip about the country gentry, you will be sadly mistaken.

I also liked the fact that while Amelia Peabody is unconventional, she’s realistically so. Amelia B. Edwards, the real-life Victorian/Edwardian Egyptologist and writer who likely inspired the character, is given a nod in the second book. Peabody is clearly written in the tradition of the women travellers and science pioneers of the Victorian and Edwardian periods, women about whom I’d love to read more.

The fact that these are first person narratives plays an important role in something I want to give some attention to - the colonial power dynamics in the books. These stories are set during the height of colonialism, and at a time when archaeology often amounted to little more than looting. Historical accuracy demands that the stories reflect these power relationships, and a first person narrator can be, I imagine, quite difficult to write in a novel with this kind of historical setting. The series only works if we distrust Amelia sometimes; if we don’t take her every observation at face value. I imagine that Elizabeth Peters didn’t want to write a protagonist with unnaturally progressive sensibilities, but she also didn’t want to simply evoke a colonial world without addressing the questions that it raises.

Peters handled this cleverly, I thought, by writing several alternative voices into the narrative. Amelia Peabody, for all her liberal attitudes, is a Victorian woman, and in many ways she perpetuates and takes advantage of the artificial power relationships that set her home country in a position of dominance over Egypt. But there are always others voices that draw attention to what’s at stake in the story; voices which makes it possible for readers to believe in the narrative while still being critical of its power dynamics. This allows a complex world to emerge, a world in which we get to see more than just a single perspective. For example:

“Such are the superstitions of paganism. Poor ignorant people!”
Emerson could not let such a statement pass. “I can show you equal ignorance in any modern English village,” he snapped. “And you can hardly call the creed of Mohammed paganism, Sayce; it worships the same God and the same prophets you do.”

Also worthy of note is the fact that Peters doesn’t cast all Egyptian characters in fixed or stereotypical roles. They’re allowed to have voices and to be many different things, including simply human beings. I don’t mean to say that Peters’ efforts are flawless and render the narrative completely unproblematic. I’m sure that there’s a lot that I, a privileged white European girl with very limited knowledge of turn-of-the-century Egypt, must have missed. But I was happy to notice that Elizabeth Peters seems to at least have made an effort and given these things some thought. The first Amelia Peabody book was published in 1975, and I look forward to seeing how Peters continues to handle the topic of colonialism as the series progresses. I like to think, perhaps optimistically, that there’s a bit more awareness of these issues now than there was a few decades ago, and I wonder whether this impacted Peters’ writing as she continued with the series.

However, for all the fun I had with Crocodile on the Sandbank and Curse of the Pharaohs, not everything was roses. My first complaint was that the ending of the first book felt a little rushed: I’d like to have seen what happens suddenly in its final chapters develop over the course of, I don’t know, about four books or so. But it could merely be that Certain Other Mystery Writers have completely spoiled me for these things.

Secondly, and more disappointingly, the characterisation can be a little thin when it comes to the secondary characters. This is especially the case in Curse of the Pharaohs, which is set like a country-house mystery. The main suspects mostly have a single defining trait, which is very often their nationality (illustrated by an accent, the copious use of American slang, or a tendency to impose of German syntax on English sentences). Other than that, they didn’t truly feel like individuals, which kept me from being as invested in the mystery itself as I might have otherwise been. The fact that the main characters do have some depth to them helps balance things out, but I’d have been happier if the rest of the characters had also felt like real people.

Finally, I have to confess I remain on the fence when it comes to how the series deals with gender. If on the one hand there are brilliant moments, like Amelia’s reaction to Evelyn’s story, on the other hand there are also quite a few essentialist statements about both genders, made both by Amelia herself and by other characters. I think these are for the most part just banter between Radcliffe and Amelia, and therefore not to be taken seriously, but they still irk me. And more worryingly, I was a little baffled to see Amelia say this of another lady:

She was tightly corseted, and the extent of shoulder and throat exposed was, in my opinion, almost indecent. The waxy white flowers crowning her upswept hair were also inappropriate. (I do not apologise for this digression into fashion. Not only is it intrinsically interesting, but it shows something of the woman’s character.)

Oh Amelia. Why? And no, it’s not that I’m not making allowances for the fact that she’s a Victorian – it’s that this contradicts some of her previous actions and statements. Plus history has less to do with it than we’d like, as the idea that exposing too much cleavage or too much leg “says something of a woman’s character” is still alive and well. Mostly I was disappointed to find several moments where Amelia’s commitment to subverting the gender norms of Victorian society seemed to vanish into thin air. But then again, perhaps I’ll be generous and believe that this is meant to tell us something about the cracks and contradictions of the world and the historical moment which she inhabited.

I didn’t love Amelia Peabody quite as unabashedly as I love Harriet Vane or Mary Russell, but then again, that’s quite difficult. This is a different kind of series anyway – perhaps a little lighter and less complex, but also much more humorous. The Amelia Peabody books are fun, unputdownable mystery/adventure stories with (despite Those Moments) feminist leanings. And that’s more than enough for me.

They read it too:

Crocodile on the Sandbank
Age 30+: A Lifetime of Books
The Book Stacks
The Book Smugglers (guest review)

Curse of the Pharaohs
Kay’s Bookshelf

(Have I missed yours?)