The Golden One: A Novel of Suspense (40 page)

The Hippopotamus Pool Popular, plucky 19th-century Egyptologist Amelia Peabody romps through her eighth archaeological adventure. When Amelia, her husband Emerson, and their thirteen-year-old son Ramses return to Egypt to begin excavation on an undisturbed Royal Tomb, they find themselves faced with a surprising new villain who is every bit as clever and resourceful as the intrepid Amelia herself!

Seeing a Large Cat Peabody and Emerson receive a warning: "Stay away from tomb Twenty-A!" Along the way to solving the mystery, the Emersons meet a spoiled young woman, an overprotective father, and an intelligent con artist — in addition to discovering that Ramses has grown from a precocious child to a teenage heartthrob. Ramses strikes out with his adopted cousin David and beautiful Nefret on adventures that are best not known to anybody . . . especially Amelia.

The Ape Who Guards the Balance Has all the elements necessary for a classic Amelia Peabody mystery: a dead body (mauled by crocodiles?), young lovers, a reunion of old friends (and enemies), archaeological discoveries — all recounted in Amelia’s own inimitable style. Excerpts from Manuscript H and letters from Nefret provide another perspective on the great detective and Egyptolologist.

The Falcon at the Portal David is accused of forging antiquities, and the Emerson clan springs into action to help clear his name. The romantic tension between Ramses and Nefret finally comes to a head, a body is discovered at Emerson’s excavation site, and the obnoxious cousin Percy reappears.

He Shall Thunder in the Sky It is 1914, the Emersons are in Egypt for another dig. Tensions within the family are heightened by World War I and a threatened invasion of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks. A dangerous game of spy vs. spy ensues, complete with deceit, deception, and disinformation.

Lord of the Silent Undeterred by world war and enemy submarines, Amelia Peabody once again sets sail for Egypt — where ghosts of an ancient past and specters of a present-day evil hover silently over an inscrutable land.

The Golden One A new year, 1917, is dawning, and the Great War that ravages the world shows no sign of abating. Answering the siren call of Egypt once more, Amelia Peabody and her family arrive at their home in Luxor to learn of a new royal tomb ransacked by thieves. Soon an even more disturbing outrage concerns the intrepid clan of archaeologists: the freshly and savagely slain corpse of a thief defiles the ancient burial site.

A Nice, Practical Career for a Woman: Some Questions for Elizabeth Peters, et al. Editor’s note: Barbara Mertzhas written nonfiction Egyptology books under her own name. As Elizabeth Peters, she is the author of many mysteries, including series starring Amelia Peabody, Vicky Bliss, and Jacqueline Kirby. As Barbara Michaels she has written gothic suspense novels. She is often addressed in correspondence and known to her in-the-know fans as "MPM" (for Michaels-Peters-Mertz). In total, MPM has published over sixty books — view the whole list here. MPM answers some frequently asked questions below.

What made you want to be a writer? I didn’t want to be a writer. I wanted to be an archaeologist. My parents wanted me to be a teacher — a nice, practical career for a woman. When they discovered, somewhat belatedly (I had been at the Oriental Institute for six months by then), that I had changed my major, they were bewildered. But, bless them, they didn’t try to make me change my mind. I still believe, with all my heart, that young people should be allowed to follow their own aspirations and inclinations, however impractical these may seem. If they don’t try, they will never know whether or not they might have succeeded.

And who’s to say what is practical? Egyptology was an impractical career, especially for a young married woman forty years ago. Writing was, and still is, an impractical career, because so few people succeed in earning a living that way. I was one of the lucky ones; and if I hadn’t been so obsessed with ancient Egypt — as I still am — I might not have noticed that I did enjoy writing, and that some people thought I was pretty good at it. But I’ve never regretted studying Egyptology, even though I was unable to make it my career.

So how did you become a writer? Luck, accident, or Fate! I had always been a compulsive reader. Sooner or later every compulsive reader finds herself thinking, "This isn’t a very good book. I’ll bet I could do better." So I tried. My first book, an espionage thriller, was written in collaboration with my then-husband. He provided the plot outline, I wrote the book. It was awful, partly because I was just learning how to write and partly because it wasn’t my kind of book. I wrote two more novels, solo, before I began to get a sense of what I wanted to write. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to publish that kind of book. It wasn’t until Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt hit the bestseller lists that publishers realized mysteries written by women, about women protagonists, could make money. (This despite the fact that authors like Phyllis Whitney had been doing it for years!) I finally sold my first mystery during this period. I’m not particularly proud of The Master of Blacktower[by Barbara Michaels], but I was able to sell it because it was what publishers were looking for just then. By that time I had learned that I loved to write, and I kept at it, learning with every book, and finally developing what I like to think of as my own style. Or is it styles?

So was The Master of Blacktower the first book you sold? The first book I sold wasn’t a mystery. I had despatched my early unappreciated mss. to every publisher in New York, every one of whom promptly returned them. When the third ms. made the rounds an editor at one of the publishing houses liked it. She couldn’t persuade her boss to buy it, but she recommended an agent. He couldn’t sell that book either, but without him I probably could not have sold the next, which was a nonfiction book on Egyptology. These days it is much more difficult to sell a book without an agent, and much more difficult to get a good agent. But it can be done.

Can you recommend others’ books to your agent? I’d like to help aspiring writers; I’d like to help everyone in this suffering world. But I can’t recommend a manuscript I haven’t read, by a person I don’t know, to my long-suffering and very busy agent. I am very fond of him and want to stay in his good graces.

Where do you get your ideas? I am sorry to say that this question has become something of a bad joke among writers. The only possible answer is: "Everywhere." You don’t get ideas; you see them, recognize them, greet them familiarly when they amble up to you. A few examples from my own experience: Reading Arthurian legends and articles about the Cadbury excavations inspired The Camelot Caper[by Elizabeth Peters]. An oddly shaped bag of trash some lout had tossed onto the shoulder of a country road make me think about bodies in trash bags and led eventually to the skeleton on the road, in Be Buried in the Rain[by Barbara Michaels]. Like all skills, this one can be honed with practice, but if you have to ask the question you probably shouldn’t try to write a novel or short story. And if you ask a writer who has heard that same question dozens of times, she may come back with some snappy answer like, "There’s a drugstore in North Dakota where I order mine."

How long does it take you to write a book? One is tempted to reply, "As long as it takes." The actual writing process is only the final step. You ought to have some idea of what you are going to write about before you put your fingers on the keyboard or clutch the pen, and that part of the process can take weeks or months or even years, as you mull over an elusive idea and try to develop it into a workable plot.

Sometimes I start writing with only a vague outline in mind, and have to go back to insert useful clues, develop characters, or even change the identity of the murderer! Naturally, it takes longer to write this kind of book. On rare and blissful occasions the book just flows along, without the necessity of major revisions. That happened to me with The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog[by Elizabeth Peters]. I wrote it in a little over two months — day and night, weekdays and weekends. However, I had already done most of the research, I had a very clear idea as to what would happen and when it would happen — the sequence, in other words — and I was intimately acquainted with most of the characters.

I know Amelia and Emerson so well by now that all I have to do is set up a situation and describe how they will inevitably react. It takes much longer for me to write a book about people I don’t know. I learn to know them as I write, and they have a nasty habit of developing in ways I didn’t anticipate. That’s when I have to go back and rewrite. I was halfway through Vanish with the Rose[by Barbara Michaels] before I realized that the person I had picked to be the murderer was obdurately refusing to kill anybody.

Are any of the characters in the Amelia Peabody mysteries based on real people? The main characters inspired by real people are Amelia Peabody (based on Victorian amateur Egyptologist Amelia B. Edwards) and Emerson (whose methodology has been attributed to William Flinders Petrie).

Do you have a schedule? No. I am not an organized person. However, when a deadline looms I can work like a demon, eight hours a day, seven days a week. Set schedules work for some people, not for others; but any writer who waits for "inspiration" to strike will never finish a book. Inspiration is all very well, but it will never replace sheer dogged determination.

Egyptian Diary: The Amelia Peabody Expedition

Over the 2000 Christmas holiday, Bill and Nancy Petty, of Museum Tours, led The Amelia Peabody Expedition in Egypt. I had dealt with them in the past, to my great satisfaction. Despite the unrest in the Middle East, which caused a few cautious souls to cancel, fifty people joined the tour — most of them Egypt buffs and fans of Amelia’s. I decided to go out a few weeks early, with a couple of friends, Dennis and Joel, before I joined the Expedition. Here are a few semi-coherent excerpts from the diary I kept as I went.

Dec. 11. It’s wonderful to be back in Cairo; makes the grisly ten-plus hours flight and the hours of waiting worthwhile. We arrived late afternoon Cairo time and were met by Khaled, one of Bill Petty’s super-efficient staff. He drove us straight to the hotel — though "straight" isn’t an accurate description, considering Cairo traffic. An early dinner and straight to bed, and tomorrow morning I’ll be back on schedule with no jet lag. It works.

Dec. 13. Off to Dahshur today, one of my favorite sites. I had hoped to get into the Bent Pyramid. It’s the only one of the major pyramids whose interior I have not visited. The SCA [the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities] had said they were planning to open it, but when we got there the scaffolding was still up and the entrance was closed. I was not inspired to make an illegal entry, though I’m sure Amelia would have. In her day it wasn’t illegal — just dangerous.

The Red Pyramid is open, but I’ve been there, done that. Not many tourists here, though it is a lovely day. The absence of tourist amenities — a rest house and souvenir stands — may deter some people. We ambled around the Red — circling pyramids is a tradition with us now — and then headed for the Black Pyramid. It really is an ominous-looking structure, having slumped into a sort of tower after the stone casing blocks were removed, exposing the dark mud brick core.

Can’t get into it, either! I would love to see the subterranean burial chamber, where Amelia and Emerson were tossed by the Master Criminal, and explore the maze-like passages within. (Twelfth Dynasty pyramids, unlike the earlier ones, have very complicated substructures; the tricks and traps didn’t stop thieves, though.) It would probably be an impossible job to shore up the collapsing walls and roofs, which were in bad shape even in Amelia’s day.

Dec. 14. Ramadan is in its last couple of weeks, which makes social engagements complicated. People have to wait until the official announcement of sundown, around five, before they can pitch into an elaborate meal, their first since before dawn — it’s called iftar, and one "takes iftar." So you don’t invite people to dinner at seven.

We had an engagement this evening with Mohammed Saleh, the charming and talented former director of the Cairo Museum, who took us to a cafe off in the city somewhere (I have no sense of direction) where we had shisha(water pipe) and coffee and plates of sweeties while we discussed a number of things. He offered to show us some of the restorations and behind-the-scenes stuff at the museum on Saturday.

In my usual state of profound confusion I called Khaled and asked him to postpone our trip to Luxor by one day, whereupon he patiently informed me that we weren’t due to leave until Sunday, anyhow. These senior moments are getting embarrassing.

Dec. 15. Dinner with Jocelyn this evening at the Oberoi restaurant in the Khan el Khalili. She had fed her family first; says that Ramadan is like cooking Sunday dinner every day; she starts around one p.m. (Apparently nobody has started a takeout for iftar. This expedient would be frowned on, no doubt. I get the impression that the meal must be home-cooked, elaborate, and of course prepared by the female.) So we had a good gossip and cruised the Khan, where I bought a few little things.

Dec. 17. Off to Luxor and the Old Winter Palace. The W.P. is no longer Luxor’s most elegant hotel — there are several newer, gaudier, five-star hotels. Nor is it the oldest: the Luxor, a favorite haunt of the Emersons, is still in operation. I wouldn’t stay anywhere but the W.P., though. The corridors are twelve feet wide, the ceilings are eighteen feet high, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see the halls and public rooms as much the way they were in the old days. The exterior is exactly the same, and it makes me feel like a Victorian lady archaeologist to walk up the curving stairs and cross the terrace. My suite has a balcony facing the river and I can look straight across toward Deir el Bahri and the Valley of the Kings.

Dec 23. I had contacted my archaeologist friends Debbie and John and made arrangements to go into the Western Desert with them. Their inspector — foreign archaeologists are required to have an Egyptian inspector with them — said it was okay for me to go, too. So on Saturday I hauled myself out of bed and got myself over to the West Bank by 8:30.