The Pharoah's Curse Murders
By Melodie Campbell
April 2025
Cormorant Books
What begins as a murder game to while away the hours aboard ship soon becomes all too real!
From the cover alone - sexy art deco with a curious scarab, you
know you’re facing Egypt in the 1920s. That era in real life, as in this
book, was aflame with passion
for all things Egyptian. The tomb of Tutenkhamun was discovered in
1922, followed by a series of deaths among archeologists, resulting in a
worldwide obsession with mummies and curses.
Like
the previous adventures of our heroine and her indomitable maid, Elf,
this one starts on a cruise ship. But this time they are
heading not across the turbulent Atlantic, instead traveling sedately
down the European coastline and along the Mediterranean to Egypt, the
gateway to the Orient, the Nile, and all the mysteries of this ancient
empire now being reclaimed from the smothering sands by eager
archeologists from several nations. You can start with this one and not
be irretrievably lost (although I'm sure you'll want to go back and read
prior 'Merry Widow Murders' afterward -
one is reviewed here).
The writing is elegant and multisensory, yet keeps the scene
moving, and the characters blossom into real people, complete with just
enough of their personal histories to ground readers in their
personality and motivations. The necessary historical world building
slides in so neatly it is almost invisible, yet everything about the
world and characters is utterly convincing. Even the archeological
politics of Egyptian excavations gets revealed to the reader in just
enough detail, through ideally placed dialogue, that we almost don’t
notice it is setting up a potential conflict between characters. Is it
conflict enough to murder someone over? We'll find out...
Amelia
Peabody fans will surely approve the Egyptology, and fashionistas of
any age will adore the nods to flapper style and designers of the era.
"a light apricot coloured sheath that covered her
trim body in the most flattering way. Adorning her bobbed hair was a
beaded headband with matching apricot feather at front."
"a
magenta beaded gown by Lanvin— not
my newest, but a favourite because of the hue. My brunette colouring
works well with jewel tones. I set a modest diadem on my head and
snatched up the matching wrap and evening bag left on the bed."
Delicious!
Imagine owning a modest demi-tiara, that presumably keeps company in
the traveling jewel case with less modest ones for more ostentatious
events.
This author does a great job of setting us in the manners and social
expectations of widowed, aristocratic ladies, without beating us over
the head with stodgy protocol. It is part of the gift of this author to put us firmly in that era
with all its prejudices and pretensions, sexism, and racism, and yet
make all the characters accessible to the modern reader without
resorting to obviously modern slang or behavior.
Underpinning all the fashion, froth, and Egyptology, other, less pleasant realities get a mention:
- that
Egyptians were stripped of authority for self-governance by European
colonizers, unable to stop the wholesale export of their cultural
history to museums and private collections around the world, and
- that women were shut out of most professions in the 1920s, and
the few who got a chance to do anything approaching scholarship, in
this case archeology, were regarded with suspicion as much by other
women as by the men who believed in their own superiority at everything.
There
is even a reference to the vital role of Egyptologist Margaret Murray,
training women in archaeological techniques at University
College, London, which is
explored in much greater length in this other review… The titular murders, like all those from the pen of this
author, is complex, well plotted, embedded in the characters'
personalities and relationships, and a pleasure to try to puzzle out as
the story unfolds in all its fascinating, curious, fashionable
historical wonder.
#NewRelease #CormorantBooks #MelodieCampbell
#MerryWidowMurders #MurderAtSea #CruiseShipMurder #Egyptology
#AmeliaPeabody #Scarab #Pyramids #Death #jewels #AmateurDetective
#AmateurSleuth #1920s #flappers #fashion #mummies
No comments:
Post a Comment