A review by ergative
The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters

4.0

This was very fun. The colonialism is a little bit less exuberant than in previous books, and Ramses was a joke that I think worked extremely well. The relationship between him and his father (doting and affectionate) compared with him and his mother (austere and critical, except when she goes berserk on people who try to hurt him) was a cute reversal of typical parental gender roles, and his wildly loquacious speech and incredible intelligence and precocity, combined with his parents' perpetual shutting-down of all his contributions that are quite important for the mystery, were hilarious. It was almost like one of those stories for children, in which the smart kid runs circles around the dumb parents who don't recognize how smart the kid is while the kid does all the work solving mysteries--only told from the perspective of the parents. I had a very good time with it.