Book Review: Elizabeth Peters’ A River in the Sky

Posted January 10, 2011 by Kathy Davie in Book Reviews

I received this book for free from the library in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Source: the library
Book Review: Elizabeth Peters’ A River in the Sky

A River in the Sky


by

Elizabeth Peters


It is part of the , series and is a amateur sleuth, historical mystery in Paperback edition that was published by William Morrow on April 6, 2010 and has 307 pages.

Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon


Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Lord of the Silent, The Golden One, Children of the Storm, Tomb of the Golden Bird, Guardian of the Horizon, The Serpent on the Crown, The Painted Queen, Crocodile on the Sandbank, The Mummy Case, Lion in the Valley, The Deeds of the Disturber, The Last Camel Died at Noon, The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog, The Hippopotamus Pool, Seeing a Large Cat, The Ape Who Guards the Balance, Guardian of the Horizon, A River in the Sky, He Shall Thunder in the Sky, The Falcon at the Portal

Twelfth chronologically in the Amelia Peabody historical amateur sleuth mystery series and nineteenth publication-wise. The series revolves around husband-and-wife archeologists, the redoubtable Amelia Peabody and the headstrong Emerson.

(A River in the Sky takes place in 1910 and slips between Guardian of the Horizon [1907-1908] and Falcon at the Portal [1911].)

My Take

I was disappointed with this one; it felt as though Peters had to get a novel out to fulfill a contract, and so she ran this one up.

In Jerusalem, a friend of Emerson’s finds them a house and help which Amelia just can’t wait to fix up. Finding staff allows Peters to fill up more pages and demonstrate the Emerson’s thoughtfulness. And just as they’re settling in, they rescue Ramses and David spoiling the bad guys’ plan. Not that it was much of a plan.

All the usual Emerson hijinks — the Father of Curses’ reputation creates interesting comic relief, and their innate kindness wins them friends who provide help.

To be honest, if you skip this one, you won’t be missing anything.

The Story

A request from His Majesty’s government sends the Emersons to Samaria to pick Ramses up from a dig in which he is participating so they can hotfoot it down to Jerusalem to keep an eye on an unscrupulous archeologist, Major the Honorable George Morley.

Unfortunately, Ramses gets kidnapped before they get there.