Reviews

The Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters

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gooberdawn's review against another edition

5.0

The characters in Elizabeth Peters books are just wonderful. Each character has a tenacious and colorful personality which adds true vigor & vitality to each & every story by this author. LOVE THEM. If you like Indiana Jones, you will LOVE these books.

jazzthecat's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

4.0

leenichole's review against another edition

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3.0

Look, I'll be straight with you. I love this series, but this is my least favorite book in it so far. I should probably rate it lower, but I'm giving it three stars out of longstanding Emerson family solidarity.

This is what it has that I liked:
1) Ramses Emerson, my favorite character in the series. Someday, that boy will actually be allowed to finish a sentence.
2) Gargery the butler. That's it. That's the sentence.

This is what it had that I didn't like:
1) Marital suspicion and jealousy as plot devices. The villain's ability to maintain secrecy relies heavily on the fact that the main characters don't trust each other. It's lazy storytelling, and it doesn't even try to be convincing.
2) Horrid children being horrid. Amelia's niece and nephew come to stay for awhile in this one and it's the worst. I daresay that writing children is not a strong suit of Elizabeth Peters.' You're seriously telling me that a six-year-old is just going to say "Nasty! Dead!" over and over instead of speaking in sentences? Nah, fam.
3) A very convoluted plot involving sex magic, dead bodies, and a very poorly explained motive for anybody to be murdered. I still don't really understand what this book was about.

And it's not even set in Egypt!

I didn't like it very much. BUT I do like the series overall, so I'm going to keep on keeping on.

virginiacjacobs's review against another edition

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4.0

The Deeds of the Disturber was pretty good. It's been better edited than some of the other books in the series, and Ramses has fully outgrown that stupid lisp. He still is an inconceivable child to me, but I guess you're allowed to do that when you write fiction. This book introduced a number of new characters, and two of them were Lords, so that became a little confusing. Also one of the Lords was dying of something, and I deduced it was syphilis, but in proper Victorian fashion, the book was very discrete about it. I think I prefer when the series takes place in Egypt (they were in England in this addition), and I'm really not sure that including Peabody's family added anything useful to the story line, but all in all, it was a very enjoyable read.