Falcon at the Portal, by Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody #11)

Started 2 books in time for the weekend, a JAK and an Elizabeth Peters. First, the EP, Falcon at the Portal, number 11 in the Amelia series. I'm slowly but surely making my way towards the end of the series.

Plot summary:

"Amelia and family have arrived in Egypt for the 1911 archeological season--after the marriage of young Ramses' best friend David to Amelia's niece Lia. But trouble finds them immediately when David is accused of selling ancient artifacts. While Amelia and company try to clear his name and expose the real culprit, the body of an American is found at the bottom of their excavation shaft. As accusations of drug dealing and moral misconduct fly, a child of mysterious antecedents sparks a crisis that threatens to tear the family apart. Amelia brings her brilliant powers of deduction to bear, but someone is shooting bullets at her--and coming awfully close!"

Posted later...

I finished Falcon at the Portal last night. After going back and forth a few times, I'll have to rate it an A.

There were times when I hated this book and wanted to throw it against a wall (and yeah, some of the things that happened were low blows), but I figure that a book that keeps me awake at night agonizing about what's happened and cursing the fact that I have to get up early, otherwise I'd stay up and finish it, deserves an A.

I'm now in love with Ramses. He gets better and better with every book, or maybe it's that we get to know him better. How I wish MPM wrote explicit love scenes... I think I read the descriptions of the consummation of his and Nefret's relationship 3 times, trying to read between the lines. Actually, MPM's great at this: while I usually kind of skim over love scenes, and don't pay much attention, I remember she had me reading and rereading the scene in the first Amelia where Emerson and Peabody just look into each other's eyes. This was more erotic to me than most of Robin Schone's full-blown love scenes.

MPM has hit on an interesting villain with Percy. I don't much like larger-than-life, invincible villains (though I'm fond of Sethos), and he is completely the opposite. He can do great damage, but just because he's stupid and a snake. I'm completely sure he engineered the appearance of Sennia to make sure Ramses never got Nefret.

I just hope Ramses and Nefret get together in the next book. This is getting worse than the Sam and Alyssa story, MPM has dragged it through even more books than Brockmann. Hmmm, I think I'm on to something. Actually, the R/N story, especially in this book, has some similarities with the S/A one. I felt the same outrage when one of them married the wrong person, just when it seemed everything was going to be fine, at any rate. Luckily, in this case I had the following 2 books waiting for me, otherwise I would have been pissed.