In another brief break from China travels, I would like to pay homage to a best-selling mystery writer who actually lives not too far from where I do when I'm in Maryland.
Yesterday, while reading the Washington Post on-line, I noticed an article stating that Barbara Mertz, aka "Elizabeth Peters" and "Barbara Michaels," celebrated her 85th birthday in Frederick, MD on Saturday, 29 September. One of the best-known - certainly the longest - of her best-selling mystery series deals with the spunky British heroine, Amelia Peabody, who with her intrepid, if irascible, husband Radcliffe Emerson (they refer fondly to each other as "Peabody" and "Emerson"), practices Egyptology during its erstwhile "heyday" in the late Victorian through - to date - post WWI period. Thus, several among the more than 100 guests who gathered together in Frederick from various locations costumed themselves as Egyptian pharaohs. Mertz herself wore "a long black gown and jet-black wig" while sitting "in a rattan throne, sipping a drink and smoking from a silver hookah like a character in 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
Mertz's literary tastes are eclectic, to say the least. Apart from the "Alice" image mentioned in the article, activities took place in the "graciously landscaped yard of Mertz's Hobbit-inspired farmhouse. A grand pyramid (c. 2012) marked the entrance. Early in the day, a live camel and a python [?!] dropped by to add Egyptian ambiance. Belly dancers entertained the audience."
I remain somewhat mystified about the python's relationship to Egyptology - surely an asp would have been a more appropos, albeit substantially more lethal, choice. Perhaps there are liability issues with parading an asp around carousing guests. And writing as "Elizabeth Peters," Mertz's work is fiction after all so why not take a few liberties? But it sounds as if all enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Among the guests were several of my favorite mystery writers: Joan Hess, Margaret Maron and Aaron Elkins are among those mentioned.
Mertz actually has a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago and began her writing career with a couple popular histories of Egypt. When she began her career writing fiction in the 1960s, her agent suggested that she use pseudonyms so that her readers would not confuse her fictional works with the previously published nonfiction. Mertz herself says that she finds the different names a "horrible nuisance" but that they do seem to help her readers distinguish among the types of books that she writes. Mertz writes nonfiction on archaeology; Michaels writes thrillers, many with a supernatural element; and Peters writes mystery suspense, with a substantial element of comedy.
I have read nearly all of her fictional offerings and plan to read the nonfiction as well. I read "Crocodile on the Sandbank," the first book in the Amelia Peabody series, when it was first published in 1975 and was delighted when many Peabody-Emerson sequels followed in the 1980s. Being quite busy professionally, I left Amelia, Emerson and their growing brood behind during much of the 1990s, but had my interest rekindled once I had actually visited Egypt for myself. So it was with great pleasure that I returned to their adventures after the millennium. Now, I am current through "A River in the Sky," published in 2010, that describes their adventures in pre-WWI Palestine, when it was a province of the Ottoman Empire, because they have been banned from their beloved Egypt.
Mertz has brought a world of joy - and imparted knowledge - to so many people through her writings that I wanted to send her my own very special birthday greetings. She is an inspiration in so many ways for so many women. Happy Birthday and thank you, MPM!
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