Book Notes: The Laughter of Dead Kings

The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters has a couple strikes against it.  (Note some minor spoilers ahead.)

The first of these is that it is not consistent with other books in the series.  Peters admits this and says she doesn’t care, which is obviously her right.  I find inconsistencies in the background of stories fairly annoying.  I like all the stories with the same character(s) to hang together.

The second is that it attempts to tie two series together, and I don’t think the series were intended to match.  For some reasons those tie-ins don’t seem to work all that well.  In this particular case, I caught on to it fairly early, and the connections are pretty obvious, but to me they don’t add anything to the story.

On the other hand, it’s written by Elizabeth Peters, after all, so it has to have something going for it.  Even though I have never liked the Vicky Bliss stories as well as the Amelia Peabody mysteries, I have always found them entertaining and fun light reading, which is obviously what they were written for.  It’s quite unfair to criticize an author for accomplishing precisely what she set out to do.

Vicky Bliss is still in love with John, and when a major artifact goes missing, he’s obviously going to be blamed somehow, especially if the crime seems particularly brilliant.  Who else could have done it?

We meet many of the old characters again and I must say I especially enjoy reading about Schmidt and his various antics.  Everything comes out OK, of course, but only at the very last minute.

So despite the two strikes, I call the book a hit, just not a home run–for me.  Others, who don’t have pet peeves about such little things, may find it a home run in entertainment.

OK, enough with the baseball metaphors already!