Ah, Amelia Peabody.

There is nobody in the world now like Amelia Peabody. A combination of the high-handed confidence of a Victorian lady who is assured of her rightness, the compassion for underdogs that comes from noblesse oblige, and the intellect of an only daughter and youngest child, raised on classical scholarship.

I want Amelia Peabody’s ability to command a room, to wield my parasol as a weapon, and to bend the world to my will.

In this, her first book – penned as a memoir to you, dear reader – Peabody records her unexpected financial inheritance (unexpected to her brothers who had left home and never looked back as they hit their majority; not unexpected to Amelia, who remained at home, sole and unsupported caregiver for her elderly father), her initial meeting (rescue) of her companion and first female friend and boon companion, Evelyn, and her primary sally against that embodiment of Victorian adventurer, the archeologist and Egyptologist, Radcliff Emerson.

Together with Radcliff’s younger brother, the linguist, Walter Emerson, Evelyn and Amelia set up camp in empty tombs, fight off a mummies and kidnappers, and take on The Master Criminal.

I love these books.

I was skimming through The Heroine with 1001 Faces last night, trying to remember if I had ever finished reading it or it had just gotten pushed down the list on my eReading app, subsumed under waaaaaaay too much True Crime, Horror, and Disease books (sorry Maria Tatar). In the chapter that came up when I opened the book, Tatar was talking about the profile of different heroines, from Disney princesses to Katniss (I do notice that Amelia has been underestimated, as usual, and does not appear in the index, even under Female Detectives) – and the pivot from girls in frilly dresses (or frilly seashells) to girls with guns, assuming the macho hero model.

Amelia stands out from these: she remains a woman – and does not have to prove it by getting raped or pregnant, as so many women in books by male authors seem to do. She puts up with no BS from anyone she comes across, whether it is an Italian tour guide who complains to a compatriot in their native tongue about her negotiating skills and belittles her appearance without realizing that she also speaks the language; or forcing Emerson to remain abed against his will and desire to maintain his poise and invulnerability while recovering from a gunshot wound. She doesn’t feel the need to bully or belittle, she just moves over them like a hoard of locusts taking on Pharaoh.

The only unfortunate thing about Amelia Peabody is that she is so damned prolific and potato-chippy. You re-read the first book and, gosh darn it, before you know it, you’ve consumed the whole darned series and are looking around to see if they’ve published any new titles.

So clear some time on your calendar and read Crocodile on the Sandbank.