Crocodile on the Sandbank

Crocodile on the Sandbank 

  - Elizabeth Peters

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It is very rare for me to abandon a book; of the 750+ books I have marked as read on Goodreads, this is only the 5th one to attain this dubious distinction. I found a recommendation for this on some of “best cozy mystery” lists, which I have been binge reading these this year. I also like history and read a bit of historical fiction, and have been fascinated by ancient civilizations, therefore a setting of Egypt was an incentive. So, I picked it up, only to abandon it after reading about one-third of it.

There is no mystery so far, though there are several other good cozy mysteries that are slow starters, it is a downside. The problem is that this is a cliched Victorian romance disguised as a mystery, which is evident early on, making it a very boring and predictable story.

I like spirited, independent women characters, and loved feminist ones in regency period in many of Georgette Heyer novels. However, Amelia Peabody is extremely unlikable, a smug do-good-er who excels at everything. I cannot reconcile myself to a supposedly intelligent, independent woman, calmly and continuously taking insults from the male lead, because she is swooning over what she considers his masculine charm and finds the conversation (i.e. little exchange they have between the insults) stimulating.

What completely put me off is that every reference to the natives describes them as uncivilized, lazy, dirty, cheats. They are considered way beneath the Europeans, and the British are the most civilized and sophisticated lot (French are lazy while Italians are cheats). These stereotypes and racist attitudes may be what most British held at the time, but the way this is presented in this 70s book makes me wonder if the author (who can be considered as a representative of the society she lives in) holds these views herself. Being a citizen of a country that was once colonized, it is particularly offensive to see authors asserting the superiority of European powers over the once-prosperous civilizations that they colonized and destroyed.