Egyptology to DIE for!

 

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, Lady Revelstoke, and her indomitable maid, Elf, this one starts on a cruise ship. This time they are heading not across the turbulent wintry 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 multi-sensory, 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. 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 their gift 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, are 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 #Canadian #BuyCanadian #CanadianAuthors

Noncorporeal IV - a haunting anthology full of twists

Noncorporeal IV: Phantom Dusk 

Creation as an act of vengeance… creation as a determination to reclaim the life that was lost or stolen...

Horrifying twists on ancient tales and urban legends fill this anthology of noncorporeal bodies that haunt the twilight hour. 

The settings span a broad expanse of time and space, from old American graveyards to a crevasse on a long-forgotten moon. These are tales of ghosts and memories, and even machine intelligences, with protagonists both corporeal and non-.  They range from simple small-town hauntings to complex multi-generational monster-hunts - or monster-hiding - from the distant past to the impenetrable future, each penned by one of USA‘s celebrated short story writers.

As often the case with collections, some of the stories are spellbinding, and others are a little less so. Some are homey and others are pure horror. But tastes vary and a story that I love might be one that a different reader shrugs and skims past. Let it suffice to say that there is excellent variety around the central theme. Something to satisfy almost every taste.

This 4th-in-series kickstarter anthology was crowdfunded in 2026 by Kevin A. Davis and produced by Inkd Publishing.

Noncorporeal IV: Phantom Dusk seeks to satisfy the reader who loves the spooky tales that will keep you reading late into the night.

Find Inkd Publishing on Facebook  and Instagram too for many crime and horror anthologies to browse and for submission opportunities.  

I’d like to thank Beverle Graves Myers, whose writing I have admired since the very first Tito Amato mystery, for hooking me up with the publisher and this review copy.

#NewRelease #anthology #horror #ghosts #phantoms #dusk #danger #monsters #clowns #haunting #halloween #reunion #teenagers #revenge #justice #UnfinishedBusiness #Inkd