I read the first few (4?) of the long running Amanda Peabody books and enjoyed them,  but haven’t had time to continue the series.   Elizabeth Peters (the pen name of Barbara Mertz)  died a couple years ago and her friend and co-author,  Joan Hess,  was kind enough to, at the request of Peters’ family,  finish the last book in the series which Peters had been working on at the time of her death.  This book, the title had already been selected,  is the result –  #20.   It was chosen as the discussion book for the 4-Mystery Addicts reading group and so I bravely skipped ahead and read it.   I’m generally glad I did but …

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The Painted Queen 
by Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess
2017/ 355 pages
read by Barbara Rosenblatt –  13h 17m
rating:   A+  /  crime – historical (Egypt in   1922 or so)
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The thing is I haven’t been following the series so I wasn’t sure about some of the characters and they got mixed up for me.
Also the plot is pretty complex and overall there are a lot of characters as well as the job of finishing things up for the whole series.

Ratcliffe and Amelia are getting ready to do their excavating thing when Amelia is attacked in her Cairo hotel room but the attacker collapses on the floor before he can put a knife in her.  He has a knife in his own back.  He manages to say “Murder!” before he dies and he’s holding a paper with Amelia’s information on it.   He also has a little calling card type thing with the word “Judas” on it.   He wears a monocle – a kind of theme.

Sethos, the couple’s nemesis and arch criminal, is on the scene,  but Ratcliffe and Amelia go off to the site at Amarna  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarna.  And the adventure continues.

I honestly think I’d like to read this again because I was interrupted and got distracted too often for the understanding I’d like to have.   I can’t do it now but … next time I need a good crime book I’ve got one.