The Hippopotamus Pool by
Elizabeth Peters
pbk out July 02
(Constable Robinson)
at £6.99
It is over 25 years since Amelia Peabody Emerson strode forcefully onto our shelves in Crocodile on the Sandbank, and in the intervening 7 books her character has dimmed not one iota. To know Amelia is to love her (or possibly to loathe her, as I suspect she may be an acquired taste).
Here she is in Egypt again, a very atypical Victorian lady in the company of her archaeologist husband Radcliffe Emerson, their son Ramses (r.n. Walter), adopted daughter Nefret, and a whole host of other familiar characters including some who did indeed excavate in Egypt in that period - Howard Carter has rather more than a walk-on part, and the names of William Flinders Petrie & Wallis Budge, among others, flit fitfully through pages. Some things don't change (though mercifully Ramses has lost the nauseating lisp he had acquired in earlier books) and once again the story boasts a Master Criminal, although this time it is no longer Sethos, serial villain of the previous books. Instead we have the sinister Riccetti, hugely overweight in the best tradition of arch-villains, plus a sprinkling of mysterious females.
There's absolutely no need to worry about the plot, as the plot certainly doesn't worry about the reader and there are no concessions whatsoever to plausibility. Just glory in the unique characters and absorb the fascinating (and absolutely authentic - Elizabeth Peters is actually Barbara Mertz, herself an archaeologist) detail about Ancient Egypt.
The Hippopotamus Pool itself, by the way, is the name of an Egyptian folk tale that Amelia is translating. And I think that's about all you need to know. Enjoy!
