The Ape Who Guards the Balance (Amelia Peabody Series #10)

by Elizabeth Peters

Overview

“Delightful….[An] engrossing plot and writing of the highest caliber.”

—Washington Times

 

A globe-trotting archeologist with more grit, wit, and fortitude than Indian Jones himself, the intrepid Amelia Peabody confronts danger and dark mystery in the desert sands of Egypt in The Ape Who Guards the Balance—a breathtaking adventure from New York Times bestselling Grandmaster Elizabeth Peters that encompasses treachery, villainy, bloodthirsty cults, the Book of the Dead…and murder most foul. The Charleston Post and Courier proclaims Elizabeth Peters “a mistress of plot,” while the New York Times Book Review declares, “Amelia remains an irrepressible delight.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061951633
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/23/2010
Series:	Amelia Peabody Series , #10
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth Peters earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s famed Oriental Institute. During her fifty-year career, she wrote more than seventy novels and three nonfiction books on Egypt. She received numerous writing awards and, in 2012, was given the first Amelia Peabody Award, created in her honor. She died in 2013, leaving a partially completed manuscript of The Painted Queen.

Hometown:

A farm in rural Maryland

Date of Birth:

September 29, 1927

Place of Birth:

Canton, Illinois

Education:

M.A., Ph.D. in Egyptology, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1952

Website:

http://mpmbooks.com/

Editorial Reviews

Amelia Peabody is Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, and Miss Marple all in one.

Washington Post

If the reader is tempted to draw another obvious comparison between Amelia Peabody and Indiana Jones, it's Amelia -- in wit and daring -- by a landslide.
— NY Times Book Review

Peter Theroux

Hilarious...fascinating.

Chicago Sun-Times

The sparkle and suspense never lessen.

Baltimore Sun

A new Amelia Peabody mystery is like visiting old friends.

USA Today

Peters' witty writing and her cast of outrageous characters move the story along at a brisk pace.

San Francisco Examiner

Tenth in this long-running, long-winded series ("Seeing a Large Cat", 1997, etc.) finds Egyptologists Professor and Amelia Emerson, their clever, stoic son Ramses, adopted daughter Nefret, and Ramses' friend David, lovingly accepted as a member of the family, preparing to return to Egypt after a stay in London marred by a crude attempt to kidnap Amelia, engineered, in Ramses' view, by their old, elusive enemy Sethos. The Professor's officially assigned task this 1906 season is to clean out some previously opened, not very important tombs, while rival Theodore Davis has been given the exploration of what is probably a royal burial site. Soon after the family returns to Luxor, Ramses and Davis, in native disguise, go on the prowl for news of Sethos, purchasing along the way a fine papyrus scroll from one Yassuf Mahmud, then getting attacked in the process and rescued by prostitute Layla. The discovery, days later, of Mahmud's mutilated body floating in the Nile is just the beginning of a series of grotesque happenings, all sandwiched between dinner parties and a visit from Emerson's brother Walter, with wife Evelyn and their daughter Lia, who's madly in love with David, as Ramses is with Nefret (in tight-lipped silence, of course). The body count rises and so does Emerson's fury at Davis' careless handling of his very important find. There are further attacks on Amelia and fleeting appearances by Sethos. By the time the major source of evil is uncovered, it's just one more unconvincing twist in the tangled plot. The author's mixture much as before: a fun trip for readers with an interest in Egyptology; for others, a confusing, fussily written, long, long trek.

Kirkus Reviews