Seeing a Large Cat

by Elizabeth Peters Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

Overview

Best-selling mystery author Elizabeth Peters has captured the hearts of thousands of readers with her spunky Victorian Egyptologist, Amelia Peabody Emerson. In Seeing a Large Cat, Amelia must ensnare a modern-day killer, a bogus spiritualist, and a predatory debutante in the awesome Valley of the Kings. Someone is sending ominous messages: "Stay away from tomb Twenty-A!" Intrigued, parasol-wielding Amelia won't rest until she finds the forbidden burial site. But when the excavation yields an unusual mummy, she suddenly must protect both her family and the macabre discovery. Her Ph.D. in Egyptology enables Elizabeth Peters to portray a lavishly detailed turn-of-the-century Egypt in her lively tale of crisp wit and shivery suspense. The spirited cast including Amelia, her eccentric family, and an array of international characters bursts into life with Barbara Rosenblat's brilliant narration.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It's 1903, and irrepressible archeologist Amelia Peabody, returning with her extended family in their charming ninth adventure (after The Hippopotamus Pool), is in Cairo, headed for the Valley of the Kings. Her husband, Emerson, receives an anonymous note telling him to stay away from tomb Twenty A. Digging there, the group discovers the mummified body of the wife of English archeology patron Colonel Bellingham who was rumored to have disappeared five years earlier with a lover, leaving behind the Colonel and his then teenage daughter, Dolly. Close examination of the corpse reveals that the woman was murdered. Since the Colonel already believes that Dolly's life is in danger, all agree that the young woman needs protection. Unruffled, Dolly keeps trying to attach herself to Amelia's teenage son, Ramses, who is intrigued by a man who might have been the dead woman's lover and who definitely attacked him while he escorted Dolly in a Cairo public garden. Meanwhile, Ramses' former tutor asks for help with her husband, who has come under the influence of a seer and now believes that the spirit of an ancient Egyptian princess wants him to find her tomb. With characteristic aplomb, Amelia straightens everything out and finds the killer. In the process, she puts off observing that her son has grown to be a handsome young man, that his Egyptian friend, David, is a quiet potential rival and that few have overlooked the beauty and intelligence of her ward, Nefret. Peters's fans will relish this latest adventure that explores mysteries of the heart as well as murder. (July)

Library Journal

Amelia Peabody and family begin the 1903 "digging" season in Egypt with the usual anticipation. At least two pleas for help and a mysterious warning about a Valley of the Kings tomb, however, complicate life and lead to the expected dangerous adventure. Essential reading from a pro.

Kirkus Reviews

In a triumphal procession of eight previous adventures (The Hippopotamus Pool, 1996, etc.), Peters has embellished the mythos of Amelia Peabody: early 20th-century English feminist and Egyptologist, wife to uxorious colleague Emerson, adoptive aunt and mother, respectively, to polite, Anglo-Arabic David and lovely Nephret of the red-gold hair (unconventionally desert-reared) and worried mom to daring, teenaged Ramses, hero and heartthrob in the making. This time, the Cairo digging season opens with a flurry of social invitations, including a mysterious challenge to investigate site 20-A in the Valley of the Kings—a tomb that doesn't exist. Except, of course, that it does, although the body uncovered there has expired so recently that the lady's golden curls and embroidered silks are still intact. Frustrated by etiquette and red tape, Amelia still finds evidence identifying the mummy as the several-years-dead fourth wife of Colonel Bellingham, an expatriate southern gentleman with a predatory belle of a daughter who's gone through paid companions as quickly as the Colonel has gone through young wives. What follows are attempts on Miss Bellingham's life, midnight excursions by the young folks, and Amelia's efforts to help an old friend whose husband is, thanks to the manipulations of a psychic charlatan, lusting after a dead Egyptian princess.

Peters compensates for ordinary prose and fussy plotting with humor and nicely calibrated domestic psychology. Fans will follow her, if only to learn how Amelia copes with Ramses's love life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171026202
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	05/27/2004
Series:	Amelia Peabody Series , #9
Edition description:	Unabridged

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