Book Review: Children of the Storm

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Children of the Storm     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Elizabeth Peters
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Cozy   Historical   Woman Main Character   Archaeology
Series: Amelia Peabody # 15
Morrow, April 2003, $25.95, 416 pp.

By December 1919, the Great War is finally over. Amelia Peabody and her husband, the famous archeologist Emerson, are in their Luxor, Egypt home along with their extended brood. This includes their son Ramses, his wife Nefret, and their two children, Emerson’s brother Walter, his wife Evelyn, their daughter Lia and her husband David and their children as well as Emerson’s illegitimate half brother Sethos and his bastard daughter Maryann.

Emerson and Amelia’s friend and colleague Cyrus Vandergelt has found a well preserved tomb in the Deir el Medina, the same place where Emerson is working on an archeologist site. Soon afterward, a trusted worker disappears with some of the treasure and his murdered body is found in the desert. A woman pretending to be the goddess Hathor kidnaps Ramses, but he escapes before he finds out what she wants. Maryann is attacked and someone sabotages the boat they are traveling on. None of the incidents form a pattern that makes any sense but Amelia knows someone is weaving a web around them and intends to trap them in it.

It is fascinating to read about three generations of Emersons in the same book. CHILDREN OF THE STORM is the fifteenth mystery starring Amelia Peabody and it doesn’t get any better than this. Elizabeth Peters brilliantly shifts from the first person to the third person so readers always know what is going on the minds of the characters. Old enemies reappear while the heroine of this amateur sleuth novel works overtime trying to figure out who is waging a vendetta against her and her family.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner