I’d been meaning to read the Amelia Peters mysteries, by Elizabeth Peters, since they popped up in my Goodreads recommendations.  I don’t know what they linked back to, but I’ve read so many mystery novels that it really could have been anything.  The first title – Crocodile on the Sandbank – sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place it, or the series.  Still, I read the description and was sold.  I’d definitely read these books.

When I finally got to it, I tore through Crocodile on the Sandbank, and then immediately read The Curse of the Pharoahs and The Mummy Case.  I started stockpiling the mass market paperbacks, gloating over the stack I had yet to read.  After all, there are nineteen books in the series!  Such riches!  I also, because I can’t resist sharing when I come across a real gem like Amelia, started singing the series’ praises to my mom.  “They’re soooooo good,” I told her.  “Amelia is such a great character!  And the settings are fantastic!  And they’re so well-written!”  My mom nodded and said that she might give them a try.  “You’ll love Amelia,” I promised.

Finally, after a few days of my prodding, my mom picked up Crocodile on the Sandbank and asked, “Is this the first one?”  When I confirmed that it was, she looked more closely at the cover and said, “Oh!  Elizabeth Peters wrote these?  Grandmama loved her.  She cut out articles about her and kept them in a binder – like she did with all her favorites.”

Grandmama had certain celebrities that she followed closely.  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  And Elizabeth Peters, although I don’t remember Grandmama ever mentioning her.  That seems odd, because I have loved Agatha Christie since I was in middle school, and bookworm that Grandmama was, I’m sure I mentioned my soft spot for whodunits.  But it’s possible that she did tell me, “If you like Agatha Christie you’d like Elizabeth Peters too,” because from the moment I picked up Crocodile on the Sandbank it felt familiar – not familiar as something I’d read before, which I know I haven’t, but familiar as something I’ve at least seen.  And maybe I have.

I can picture the books lined up on the den shelves at Grandmama and Grandpapa’s house on Long Island.  Was Elizabeth Peters among them?  I don’t remember.  (I remember The People in Pineapple Place, by Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s daughter, also named Anne, and which I have too.  And I remember, later, the Harry Potter books lined up on the shelf, not in the den, but in the kitchen, where they greeted anyone who walked into the house and wanted to immediately grab something to read – which was me, many times.)  But Elizabeth Peters could have been there.  She would have fit right in on those shelves.

I am thoroughly enjoying the Amelia Peabody mysteries.  I’m about to pick up another one.  I like them for themselves, because all of the things I told my mom about the books, before I learned that Grandmama loved them too, are true: Amelia is a great character, the settings are fantastic, and they’re really, really well-written.  But now I also love them for another reason: because Amelia built me a bridge back to Grandmama’s house.  Now when I pick them up, I see myself reading them stretched out on a lounge chair in Grandmama’s perfectly landscaped backyard, listening to the cicadas and eating ice cream (there was always ice cream), as I did with so many other books.  I never read Amelia in that place, but I could have.  What a gift to find a series, fall in love with it on its merits, and then find out coincidentally that I share that love with my grandmother.