Chapter 1 Summary

Amelia Peabody is in Rome in 1884, where she meets the woman who is to become her companion and eventually her sister-in-law, Evelyn Barton-Forbes. Through their friendship, they enjoy a trip up the Nile, where they meet the Emerson brothers, Radcliffe and Walter, who are archaeologists specializing in Egyptian culture. The lives of the four become inextricably entwined through events ranging from missing wills, rejected lovers, and reanimated mummies. Once everything is solved to the general satisfaction of most involved, Radcliffe and Amelia are married and Walter and Evelyn, too, marry.

Elizabeth Peters, author of Crocodile on the Sandbank, is an Egyptologist by training and has a great love of the Victorian era and the gothic tradition in storytelling. The combination of these interests results in the first of the Amelia Peabody series. Amelia Peabody is introduced as a thirty-two year old spinster, who...