My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Once you get into Book 3 of the Amelia Peabody series, The Mummy Case, you start picking up steam for the long haul of the bulk of all these books. Hands down, the best aspect of it is that Amelia and Emerson’s young son Ramses joins them for the first time in Egypt, and therefore starts taking his place as a primary character in the family’s adventures. Much like with Book 2, though, aside from Ramses starting to become his catastrophically precocious self, the rest of this story doesn’t stand out as much for me plot-wise. There’s certainly plenty of intrigue surrounding the murder of an antiquities dealer and the disappearance and reappearance of a mummy case, as well as the usual colorful cast of characters that populates any Amelia Peabody adventure.
What really sells this one for me, though, is all the character interaction–particularly with Ramses. He’s still too twee as of this book, what with Peters still writing out all his dialogue with a lisp–but he starts exhibiting the tendencies that make him quite the little holy terror for his parents to raise. The bit with the lion in this book, in particular, is gold. I also absolutely adore that Ramses, in emulation of his parents, carries out his own tiny excavation that turns out to be quite a bit more important than either of his parents expect. Four stars.