Outside of a Dog: Peters, Elizabeth: (01-04) Crocodile on the Sandbank; The Curse of the Pharoahs; The Mummy Case; Lion in the Valley (audio)

Elaine

Elaine wrote on March 13, 2005 at 6:58 AM:

Unfortunately, the ones you read are usually considered among the best. I was an early fan, and since I am a completist still read (or try to read) each book as it comes out. It takes me longer and longer to get around to it. I think Amelia is supposed to be read satirically, and that the Master Criminal plot is a tribute to the penny dreadfuls, but if you can't swallow these two attributes, you might as well give up on the series, since you have yet to encounter the too stupid to live young woman who is supposed to be an extremely intelligent doctor. She is the one who really sticks in my craw. Oh, and I forgot to mention characters who are firmly tied to a historical background and forget to age. Glad to see you posting reviews again.

Kate

Kate wrote on March 13, 2005 at 9:51 AM:

Elaine: thanks, that's too bad--if I need to read Amelia satirically I don't want to read her. Satire is not my preferred genre. Oh well--it's too bad, I was hoping to have discovered a reliable source of lots and lots of audiobooks.

PiscusFiche

PiscusFiche wrote on March 13, 2005 at 11:35 AM:

I'm rather sorry you aren't enjoying the Amelia books as much as I do, but I can see how the genre might have elements that make you twitch. Peters is totally spoofing H. Rider Haggard and Indiana Jones at the same time. I also think that the audio versions would probably really ruin the books for me, since there are a lot of riffs on the Victorian sensibilities and novel plots. Ramses turns into a real person rather rapidly--and when he gets older, I admit I have a bit of a crush on him. The fifth book deals a lot with Ramses's childhood dynamics if I recall correctly.

Kate

Kate wrote on March 13, 2005 at 12:03 PM:

PiscusFiche: thanks, I'll get the fifth Amelia book out the library, probably. I feel rather dense for not thinking that these are spoofs, but they're really not packaged or presented that way. And I think Amelia would grate either way. But I'll definitely approach the fifth one with this in mind.

PiscusFiche

PiscusFiche wrote on March 13, 2005 at 5:04 PM:

A little background on the author: Elizabeth Peters also writes as Barbara Michaels. Her real name, as I understand it, is Barbara Mertz, and she turned to writing after realising that her PhD in Egyptology wasn't going to be putting a lot of bread on her family's table. She started off writing suspense romances, which are primarily written under the Barbara Michaels pseudonym, but her heroines got smarter and more sarcastic over a period of time. So she turned to writing mysteries with a bit of a spoofy feel to them under the Elizabeth Peters name. Vicki Bliss is actually my favourite of the Peters heroines, personally, although I don't mind Amelia. (I don't find her grating, but I can see how some of her more Victorian qualities and ways of elucidating and preaching at her family would get annoying. In later books, you get snippets and pieces of Ramses POV, which I find entertaining.) Try some of her other Peters books. I like the Vicky Bliss ones, as well as the standalones Legend in Green Velvet (which DOES date itself with a reference to Prince Charles, but which is otherwise quite amusing), The Camelot Caper (which actually ties into both the Vicky Bliss series and the Amelia Peabody books--a character who shows up in the Camelot Caper shows up in the VB series, and EP/BM has said before that Ramses is somehow related to this character) and Devil May Care are some of my favourites. The best of the Jaqueline Kirby books is easily Die For Love, which is a murder mystery set at a Romance Writers convention. (Although historical fans of Richard the Third and the two princes in the tower may prefer the Murders of Richard the Third.) All of these books are pretty tongue-in-cheek and fluffy-but-fun reads, although slightly less spoofy than the Amelia books. Again, let me reiterate: audio may ruin the effect. Hearing somebody pronounce "that genius of crime!" and other such rhetorical hyperbole could only grate over a period of time. Reading it, I feel, makes it much easier to digest.

Kate

Kate wrote on March 13, 2005 at 9:03 PM:

PiscusFiche: thanks for the Peters information. I've been looking at the Vicky Bliss books--the paperback exchange has a late one. They're present day?

Heather Blatt

Heather Blatt wrote on March 15, 2005 at 9:49 PM:

Yes about the Vicky Bliss books being present-day. So are the Jaqueline Kirby ones. I find both more palatable over multiple exposures than I do Amelia. While I liked the Peabody/Emerson books long enough to go through the first eight, since then I've found the only of Peters' novels I'm inclined to re-read are a couple of the Vicky Bliss books, a couple of the Jaqueline Kirby ones, and Crocodile on a Sandbank. I rather wish Peters would write another Vicky Bliss book, but one of the things I find aggravating about Peters' writing style is that she differentiates her female protagonists from other women with very broad strokes, character traits that get exploited to a tiresome degree given enough books.