When we last saw Amelia Peabody at the end of “The Last Camel Died at Noon” by Elizabeth Peters, she was escaping imprisonment with her husband Emerson and their son Ramses. They had been held against their will in the fabled Lost Oasis, not quite so fabled any more, now that they had found it. They brought back with them a peculiar souvenir in the form of a beautiful thirteen-year-old girl named Nefret, who had been raised to believe that she was the High Priestess of Isis, when in actuality she was English and the daughter of the persons Amelia had set out to find.
When we open “The Snake, The Crocodile, and The Dog,” we find that the Emersons have chosen to take Nefret into their care. Giving their vow that they will keep her origins a secret, lest gold-hungry invaders take off across the desert and demolish the Lost Oasis, they invent the story that Nefret’s parents died in the desert and she was then raised by kindly missionaries. It becomes difficult to keep all the stories straight, but the Emersons feel confident that the truth behind Nefret’s sudden appearance will never be revealed.
There’s just one problem, though – Nefret brought a souvenir of her own back to England – priceless antiquities that could not possibly pass for fakes. Emerson decides that on their next trip to Egypt, they must be returned, hidden, and then “found” on one of their digs, thus giving the documentation the objects need. This seems like a good plan until someone tries to kidnap Amelia, and then, that failing, to shoot her, and finally end up kidnapping Emerson. The ransom note Amelia receives demands more information about the Lost Oasis. It seems she must either cough up the map or lose her husband.
Amelia doesn’t like ultimatums. Instead, she chooses to rescue Emerson and does so quite nicely, only to find that he has taken a nasty crack on the head and does not remember her. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything from the time he met her to the present day.
The usual murders, attempted murders, and Egyptian archaeology digs abound in this novel of suspense, continuing Elizabeth Peters’ tradition of a marvelous who-dun-it set in Victorian times.
(This book was published in 1992 by Warner Books.)
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