Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

As I said I might after reading the last book, I've started a reread of the whole Amelia Peabody series, by Elizabeth Peters. Book number one is Crocodile on the Sandbank.

Elizabeth Peters's unforgettable heroine Amelia Peabody makes her first appearance in this clever mystery. Amelia receives a rather large inheritance and decides to use it for travel. On her way through Rome to Egypt, she meets Evelyn Barton-Forbes, a young woman abandoned by her lover and left with no means of support. Amelia promptly takes Evelyn under her wing, insisting that the young lady accompany her to Egypt, where Amelia plans to indulge her passion for Egyptology. When Evelyn becomes the target of an aborted kidnapping and the focus of a series of suspicious accidents and mysterious visitations, Amelia becomes convinced of a plot to harm her young friend. Like any self-respecting sleuth, Amelia sets out to discover who is behind it all.

I loved it, it may sound clichéd, but it was visiting with old friends. An A+.

Ahhh, this is were it all started. I really loved seeing the first indications of those character traits so developed in the following books. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the characters were already pretty formed here. They develop in the rest of the series, and grow, but they are still the same people they are in this first book.

What can I say about Amelia and Emerson that I haven't said a thousand times before? What is here that isn't in the rest of the books is them falling in love, and it was wonderful. One intense look into each other's eyes was more erotic than a full-blown sex scene in other books ;-)

The plot was ok, but a bit too obvious. I probably remember it from when I first read this, but really, if one accepts that nothing supernatural was going on, there's only one solution, and one very easy to guess.

On to book number two, now!