mummy dearest | Mummy Dearest (Claire Malloy Mysteries, No. 17)

An excellent mystery. | Mummy Dearest (Claire Malloy Mysteries, No. 17) | Joan Hess

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	• Mummy Dearest (Claire Malloy Mysteries, No. 17) Joan Hess St. Martin's Minotaur, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Audio version

The book isn't bad, but man, the reader in the audio version is BAD at accents. Seriously awful. When you can't tell the difference between an Egyptian and a Scot, you know you need a new reader. Needless to say, the crappy accents make the story much more difficult to follow in the audio version.

mummy dearest

The story and writting were good. The story went along at one pace then the end seemed kind of rushed at a different pace.

An excellent mystery.

Bookseller and amateur sleuth Claire Mallory and her boyfriend Police Lieutenant Peter Rosen are finally married. Within days of marrying, Peter heads to Egypt. He's working undercover for the Egyptian government in connection with a newly formed terrorist organization. Claire, her daughter Caron, and her friend Inez meet him in Luxor.

Claire knew she would be left behind whenever Peter was called to duty, but she was left alone more often than not. If it hadn't been for the group of Egyptologist/collectors staying at the hotel, she would have spent the time shopping and visiting the sites. When inconsistencies in their stories surfaced, Claire dialed back her suspicious nature determined not to get involved, but the bodies started piling up. And then there was the man with the scar. The girls swore he was following them. The kidnapping was the straw that broke the camel's back. Claire had to get to the bottom of it even if that meant alienating her husband and setting the record for the world's shortest marriage.

Mummy Dearest is a great story with a wonderful cast of characters. There is enough history woven into the story to make it relevant, but not enough to overwhelm it. It's not an easy balance to maintain. Joan Hess did it well. I thoroughly enjoyed the book from beginning to the end.

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What Fun!!

This was so much fun, it almost makes up for no Amelia Peabody book (written by Elizabeth Peters) this year. I got to visit Luxor again.

I enjoy all of Joan Hess's books and was so excited to finally get this one that I just opened it and started reading. By the time I was on page 50 it felt so familiar that I had to stop and investigate. I turned back to the front of the book and found that it was dedicated to Barbara Mertz also known as the Elizabeth Peters mentioned above. And in the endnotes you find that Joan Hess actually went to Luxor with Barbara Mertz/Miss Peters -- what a dream trip!

I really enjoyed the book but I kept expecting Amelia and Emerson (from the Peters' books) to suddenly appear at one of the cocktail get-togethers. They would have had to time-travel forward 80 years but it would have been great. (I think maybe a descendant was there.) The names and characters and settings were all so familiar and to have Claire, Peter, Caron and Inez there was twice as fun.

Peter and Claire are finally married, she gets involved with stuff she shouldn't, as usual. Bringing Inez and Caron along on the honeymoon was hilarious. I'm still not sure who two of the English women were (red herrings, I guess). But I did enjoy the book a lot.

It will be fun to see if Miss Hess stays with this storyline with Peter as CIA (or whatever) and lets Claire travel to solve more international mysteries or takes them back home to Arkansas and the bookstore.
-cba

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Most thoughtful of her books

Joan Hess is my favourite author, her humour and skilful writing bringing her zany plots to life. Before I received this book, I had just re-read her The night-blooming cereus (a Theo Bloomer mystery) she wrote under the name Joan Hadley, and this latest and most rounded of the Claire Malloy series reminds me very much of the earlier book. I think it is a great blend of humour and mystery and an introduction to Egypt; I found her view of Egypt and tourism very informative, as well as giving opportunity for crazy sub-plots and even crazier people. Not her funniest, but her most thoughtful.

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After a somewhat long and, at times, strange courtship, Claire Malloy -- a single, widowed mother of a teenage daughter and a bookseller in Farberville, Arkansas - has finally said 'I do' to her swain, Lt. Peter Rosen of the Farberville Police Department. Now they are on their honeymoon in Luxor, Egypt. Well, Claire is on her honeymoon - accompanied by Caron, her teenaged daughter, and Inez, Caron's best friend and frequent partner in adventure. Peter is mostly away on various mysterious consultations with equally mysterious government agencies is his new, completely undiscussed, role in law enforcement.

Staying at the glamorous Winter Palace in Luxor, Claire is intent on a quiet, uneventful honeymoon involving shopping, tourist sites, and, when it can?t avoided, drinks with the local British expatriate contingent. But despite her determined efforts to avoid any involvement in criminous events, the tenor of the trip quickly switches from bucolic to creepy. First, Caron and Inez are chased through darkened deserted alleys by persons unknown. Then a blond college student of their recent acquaintance is kidnapped by two young men on horseback in a scene reminiscent of a Rudolf Valentino film. Something is clearly afoot in this tourist paradise, and now Claire will stop at nothing to find out what.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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