Reading Like a Writer: Crocodile on the Sandbar

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

Last week, I participated on a panel for the quarterly Sisters in Crime's Reading Like a Writer Book Club, with sister mystery writers Julie Hennrikus, Gigi Pandian, Jen Collins Moore, and Stephanie Argy. Every few months, Sisters in Crime chooses a book, and we all read it with the intention of identifying and discussing the elements that make it a compelling mystery novel, so we can use them to strengthen our own writing.

This time, it was Crocodile on the Sandbar by Elizabeth Peters, one pen name for Barbara Louise Mertz (1927–2013), who wrote long-running series as well as stand-alone mysteries.

I confess, until two weeks ago, I had never read Crocodile on the Sandbar. (I was the only one on the panel who hadn't.) Because I write historicals, I knew I'd be called upon to discuss Peters' treatment of the Victorian era: How does Peters fix this novel in 1880s London and Egypt? 

I curled up and flew through the book in an afternoon -- what a fun read! How did I miss these as a young adult? I would've loved them then. I was always a huge fan of romantic suspense by Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney, and this novel has a lot in common with those. Part of my pleasure in reading the book now is that I traveled to Egypt last year, and so I found all sorts of "Easter Eggs" -- mentions of things I saw and learned there. (Just for fun, here I am dangling a pyramid!)

For those who don't know, this book is the first in what became known as the Amelia Peabody series (with 20 books), about a spirited, progressive, 30-something "spinster" in 1884 London, who has been left a fortune by her father. Her five older brothers are furious that she has been chosen as his heir, but her father's solicitor won't let them break the will. Once the inheritance is settled, Amelia explains:

"I had always wanted to travel. Now I decided I would see all the places Father had studied -- the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome; Babylon and hundred-gated Thebes."

Wow. Peters does two remarkable things in that line to ground her tale firmly in the Victorian period. First, the line "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" is a line from "To Helen," a 1831 poem by Edgar Allen Poe, which would have been familiar to Victorian readers. She also uses the Victorian name "Thebes" for what we now refer to as Amarna.

But beyond this, Peters shows Amelia doing something the Victorians were famous for -- memorizing poetry and tucking it into everyday speech without attribution. People of a certain education were expected to pick up on it. 

So in this one small passage, Peters anchors Amelia in the Victorian period, with respect to what she knows and how she speaks.

Peters also works in vocabulary particular to the Victorian era, including elements in the streets -- the butcher and baker as separate shops; physical objects  -- gingham dresses, Brussels carpets, gilt-edged mirrors; and the medicines she brings with her to Egypt -- "blue pills, calomel, rhubarb, Dover's powder, James's powder, carbolic acid, laudanum, quinine, sulfuric acid, ipecacuanha."

Another way the book is grounded in the Victorian period is by what I call its central theme -- how a woman can determine her life within Victorian legal, social, and economic frameworks. Peters is profoundly concerned with questions surrounding women's rights, suffrage, clothes that provide freedom of movement, and women having power over their money -- a concern that occupied the Victorians specifically during the 1880s. In chapter one, Amelia asks her solicitor, Mr. Fletcher, "Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself." Shortly after, she explains, "At Fletcher's suggestion I made my will." These are unusual attitudes and actions for a Victorian woman -- but ones that suggest evolving aspects of the culture.

To put this in context, a bit of history: The long-standing legal doctrine of "coverture" meant that in the 19th century, a single woman (a feme sole) could own property and even bequeath it as she wished. However, a woman who married (feme couvert) would immediately forfeit all rights to her property. Upon marriage, everything she owned -- including her dowry -- belonged to her husband. The suffrage movement was deeply concerned with this situation -- and in 1870, two things happened that suggest the ways society was changing. (1) the first Married Women's Property Act was passed. This meant that, for the first time, working-class women did not have to turn their earnings over to their husbands. Now, whether this happened or not in practice, this law was the first wedge into the iceberg; subsequent Married Women's Property Acts gradually expanded the possibilities for middle-class and upper-class women to control their money as well. (2) The very first issue of the Women Suffrage Journal was published. So Amelia's feminist views are in keeping with ongoing discussions in Parliament and the public press.

The author, Barbara Mertz, was as progressive as her heroine Amelia. Mertz earned her PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in the 1952, an unusual achievement for a woman. In the 1960s, Mertz authored two books on ancient Egypt: Temples, Tombs, and Hieroglyphs, a popular history of ancient Egypt; and Red Land, Black Land, which explores daily life in ancient Egypt.  

As every writer knows, there can be the risk of info-dumping when you have so much knowledge about a particular topic. But Peters feathers it in beautifully, using a variety of techniques. One of them is a scene between Amelia and Emerson, a brilliant and rather arrogant archaeologist. As they stand together in the museum in Cairo, they argue -- and in the process provide a great deal of information about Egypt. 

 

The "dig" that the Emerson brothers and Amelia and her friend Evelyn work is in Amarna, around the tomb of the Akhenaten (photo), originally named Amenhotep IV, known as the "heretic pharaoh" for his radical religious reforms that shifted ancient Egypt from a polytheism to monotheism. After he died, his name was erased from cartouches, and the polytheistic religion was reestablished. I found it interesting that Peters chose this pharaoh as the object of interest in a book about a woman who overturned expectations and rebelled against societal norms. I find it yet another interesting layering of thematic and historical elements.

Have you read this book? What do you think of it?

AWOL

Annamaria is Absent Today

It was the difficulty trying to upload pictures when I was already nurging a migraine that put me over the edge.  I think Blogger dislikes my MAC laptop, and that was making it all worse.  And then it told me, when I tried to email a photo to mysel, that it could not send a photo to an unknown person.  Ouch!   

Here's why:

Migraine

Ice Pick Headache

You can read more about it if you click the links.  But I warn you: it isn't pretty.

In the inimitable words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, "I'll be back!"

Happy Valentine's Day

 

Saturday, February 14, 2026

 ––Jeff

 

This being a site hosted by crime writers, you might think I’m about to plunge into a discussion of the most famous bloody Valentine’s Day ever, February 14, 1929.  That’s when members of Al Capone’s South Side Gang—some dressed as cops—lined up seven men affiliated with Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang inside a garage and shot them dead as part of a war for control of organized crime in Prohibition-era Chicago. 

But you’d be wrong, for this piece is about hearts and flowers.  No, ye cynics, not bullets through the heart and flowers for a funeral, but those bouquets you give to your beloved on the 14^th of February—or risk consequences unmentionable in civilized society.

Yes, chocolates (a rumored aphrodisiac) and cards (did you know the first card was written in the form of a poem from a royal prisoner in the Tower of London to his wife?—even he knew forgetting was not an option) are also big Valentine’s Day favorites, too, but this is about flowers.

Charles, Duke of Orleans and first Valentine's Day card sender

But first a bit of history on how lovers became so obsessed with VD—hmm, any wonder why that acronym never caught on?

One legend says it began during a time of religious persecution in third century Rome, when Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for soldier-age young men.  Single men fought better, he thought. [Ed. Note: With great will power I resisted inserting a joke here.] 

A young priest thought that unfair, and kept performing marriages in secret.  When Claudius discovered the priest’s violation of his edict, the Emperor sentenced him to death.  While in prison, the priest befriended and healed his jailer’s blind daughter, and before being put to death—on February 14, 270—sent a letter to her signing it “From Your Valentine.”

Yep, Valentine was his name, and the legend goes on to say that in 496, after Valentine had been sainted, Pope Gelasius declared February 14^th as a day to honor his memory as the patron saint of happy marriages, engaged couples and young people.

That’s disputed though, for some claim the date corresponds to the Roman fertility celebration of Lupercalia held between February 13^th and 15^th, and others claim it relates more to the period on the ancient Athenian calendar dedicated to the marriage of Zeus and Hera.   You knew I’d work the Greeks in here somewhere.

Lupercalia by Beccafumi

But it’s undisputed that the romantic love connotation to Valentine’s Day began in the 14^th Century with this simple line by one rather influential writer:

 

Translation available via Glasgow

Still, it wasn’t until the early 1700s that flowers became a tradition on Valentine’s Day. That’s generally attributed to Charles II of Sweden’s introduction to Europe of the Persian custom of the “language of flowers.”  Each flower had its own meaning, a sort of secret code between the sender and recipient.

And with the rose symbolizing passion and love, it’s no wonder roses are the number one best seller every Valentine’s Day (250 million in the US annually).  But there are other flowers finding their way to Valentines, and for those of you wondering just what your beloved may have meant by those flowers that arrived at your doorstep today, here’s a list of meanings. http://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/aboutflowers/flower-meanings

Just don’t shoot the messenger.

By the way, Valentine’s Day isn’t a big deal in Greece.  No reason to be, Greece gave Eros to the world.  Now it’s only looking to get some love back in return.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Barbara, Karen, Gavi, and Rachel. Okay, Jon, Terry, and Azi, too. And of course to….

Jeff—Saturday

The cop who cops the cops - Guest Post by Mike Nicol

 

Mike with his home mountain as background
Picture: Estee de Villiers  

When I received a review copy of Mike Nicol's new book, Falls the Shadow, late last year, I was excited. I've enjoyed all Mike's books and this was the first in a long-awaited new series set in Cape Town. I wasn't disappointed. It turned out to be my favourite mystery novel of the year. Falls the Shadow has just been released by Catalyst Press in North America, adding one of South Africa's most talented thriller writers to their impressive stable of African authors.

Mike is also a writing educator, and many of his masterclass students have had their work published. He has a regular substack with lots of interesting stuff about writing. And he's a good friend. So it's a pleasure to welcome him to Murder Is Everywhere to talk about his new series. Over to you, Mike.

Like most writers I’ve been on the wrong end of some really nasty reviews, so, years ago, I decided to stop reading them. And since then, life has been minus one huge stress. Although I have to admit that a quip dismissing an early novel - way before the crime novels - was funny. Clearly fed-up with my story, the reviewer wrote: “Time to put another nickel in”. As you can tell, I’ve not forgotten that one!

Just recently, one of my writing friends - Paige Nick - reviewed my latest crime novel, Falls the Shadow, for her podcast. She told me she had only good things to say, but I said, no offence, but I won’t be listening. However, in a Facebook promo for her podcast I did read her blurb: “All I can say is that I hope author, Mike Nicol, doesn’t get pulled over by the cops in Cape Town this year. Because some really bad cops out there may not like the truths he’s dishing out about them in his new novel, Falls the Shadow.”

Yes, well.

      Coming to a cop novel has been a bit of a thing for me. When I started writing crime fiction back in 2008, I decided the way in was via the security industry - a huge industry in SA with more security guards than there are officers in the South African Police Service. The entry point was two characters who had been gun-runners for the now ruling African National Congress during what is known as The Struggle (to stop apartheid). Four books made up what became the Mace Bishop series.

After that, I thought why not get on the Private Investigator gig. Lots of writers, starting with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, have put their gumshoes on the mean streets and that always makes for good stories. So I came up with a surfer dude called Fish Pescado and his lawyer-spy-lover Vicki Kahn and sent them forth. Five books later I thought it was time for another change.

Zara in South Africa

In fact, I thought it was time to face the cops. Okay, I have a thing about cops. If you came of age in South Africa during the apartheid decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the cops were an invading army. The residue of that was a serious prejudice which I had to overcome. But then the cops that prowl the streets of what is called Democratic South Africa, came to my aid. Pretty soon they were the front-end of a mafia state.

Which led to the question, what if my cop, copped the cops? For which there is a Latin phrase from Juvenal, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - who watches the watchmen. And I must fess up: I didn’t read it in the original but in that wonderful graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.

And believe me, the SAPS does supply a ready source of storylines. One of those is about guns. South Africa is awash with guns. There are the guns people buy to protect themselves. There are the guns the gangsters “acquire” to enforce their trades be it drugs, trafficking, extortion, or that ever present freelance activity, being a hitman. And then, there are the guns, many of them AK47s, left over from The Struggle. Guns handed in to the police or discovered during regular policing activities are supposed to be destroyed by sending them to the steel mills for crushing. However, there are devious cops who sell them on to the underworld. This became a useful storyline for Falls the Shadow. All I needed was a gutsy cop to start tracking down the bad guys.

And in Germany...

      Fortunately, in the last of my Fish and Vicki novels, a cop had presented herself: one Captain Zara Dewane. She was in your face, she could handle the cop gun (a Vektor Z88); she drank Malbec, she was a single mom to a teenage son, she’d divorced her sociopathic husband, and she had no qualms about going after the bad guys even though the bad guys were fellow SAPS members. I stationed her in an out of the way office block on some waste ground near Cape Town’s famous V&A Waterfront. It’s in the weeds but close to the glamour.

Some things about Zara: yes, her first name owes a lot to the clothing brand, Zara. I happened to be in Paris at about the same time as she made her appearance in my fiction and the brand was everywhere and Zara just seemed such a strong name. Also, the Z matched with the Z88.

Her surname I can track back to a non-fiction book I wrote on the murder in Cape Town of a young woman called Anni Dewani. She was on honeymoon in the city from the UK when she was shot and killed during a car hijacking. There was lots of talk at the time that her husband, Shrien, had contracted a hit on her. He went home to England before he could be arrested but, eventually, he was extradited to stand trial. To everyone’s surprise he was found not-guilty. Her name resonated for me and eventually, in a slightly different form, I attached it to Zara.

One of the other aids I had in establishing Zara’s character was music. I don’t listen to music while I write but I do use it to “colour” a character. By that I mean it gives emotional substance to the character. In this instance, I had the “assistance” of a group called 4 Non Blondes. They had their time in the early 1990s but I have no recollection of listening to them then. Indeed, I have no idea how I came across the foursome. But whatever the lucky happenstance that led me to their songs, they were exactly what I needed, especially the three hits, “What's Up”, “Spaceman”, and “Dear Mr President”. Linda Perry, the lead singer, left the group and started a solo career in the mid-1990s and her album In Flight went to help my second book in the Zara Dewane series - Firing Line.

So Zara will be back in February 2027, always assuming I don’t get pulled over by some pissed-off Cape Town cops. But let’s not tempt fate.

Thinking Murder at a Wake

Ovidia--evey other Tuesday

I didn’t plan a post for this week because most of last week was spent sitting in on a family funeral wake in that bizarre state where you're both 'on duty' and not doing anything.

I considered writing about local funeral customs (which I may do another time when I've had a chance to research) but for now, I’m going to talk some of the mystery novels I found myself thinking about.

One book that came immediately to mind was After the Funeral by Agatha Christie.

The book has extended family, old neighbours, relatives and family friends reconnecting at a funeral. You meet people you knew as a child but don’t quite remember, realising you're now older than they were when you first thought of them as “old.”

No, I didn't spot any imposters at our wake, though that might be because the astute first clue finder usually ends up dead...

But it made me realise how much the domestic helpers many depend on now have become part of the family, taking on the 'lady companion' roles that occur in Christie's world. And these everyday companions are often both closer to and more easily overlooked than relatives who rarely connect.

Also, I realised much of what we accepted as children as 'facts'about family members came from stories someone told someone who then slightly embellished and told someone else!

As we listened to memories of neighbours in Ipoh, the move down to Singapore after the racial riots, his years of teaching in NUS and SMU, all against the background of a changing Singapore and his love of mathematics and playing the mandolin I thought of Chan Ho-Kei's The Borrowed.

In The Borrowed, Inspector Kwan Chun-dok’s cases are followed in reverse over 6 novellas, starting with his most recent case (set in 2013) and moving back in time to his first case in the 60’s, at the beginning of his career.
Though each case is complete in itself, they are linked by recurring characters and themes and the evolving background of Hong Kong.

Inspector Kwan is in a coma at the start of the first book, and the reader is made very aware there are probably a good many more stories that didn't get told.
(another reminder to put down all we can while we still can!)

A small detail--the mandolin--made me think of the koto in Seishi Yokomizo’s The Honjin Murders.

Here the characters are immersed in the rituals, hierarchies and formal gatherings that follow a death where everyone is expected to behave correctly in the correct space.

It felt like a connection though it was set in 1930s Japan where feudal attitudes were (reluctantly) adjusting to modernisation, because it was where our own departed’s life started: moving from the 1930s and coming to see the digital age after passing through World War 2 and Covid.

The different stories told also made me think of Qiu Xiaolong's Death of a Red Heroine.

Where it's only after the murder of Guan Hongying that her two very different lives are revealed--the publicly celebrated role model had a hidden side.

Our different sides weren't so drastically or dramatically different--but the familiar grandfather and father figure had also been a loyal son and brother who loved sports cars and survival training...

But of all of these, the one I thought about most (maybe because it's also a longtime personal favourite) was Sujata Massey's The Widows of Malabar Hill.

Perveen Mistry negotiates rigid rules and expectations with intelligence and tactful restraint as she works within the system to do what she can for the three widows of Omar Farid.
Her focus (and the focus of the novel) on how death affects the living.

Maybe that's another reason I like murder mysteries so much. They provide a chance to explore our proximity to death and our relationship to others. And (in traditional mysteries at least) they provide a tidy resolution that we seldom get in real life.

May you all be happy, healthy and reading and writing lots!

Chagall in Ferrara

Annamaria on Monday

Exactly a week ago from the time this blog launches, I was on my way to meet up with some friends for a few days in the city of Ferrara, a place I have not been to for a few decades.  I have a lot to report on what turned out to be a wonderful experience, but for today I will begin by sharing the first stop on our tour, a massive exhibition of the work of Marc Chagall.

I am beginning with a poem about the artist, because it is very dear to my heart.  You see, shortly after I first met my dear departed husband David, the first time he and I were together when someone mentioned Chagall. The two of us, simultaneously, began to recite Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem. Here it is in all its delightful glory, thanks to The Poetry Foundation: 

 Don’t Let That Horse . . .

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Don’t let that horse

                              eat that violin

    cried Chagall’s mother

                                     But he   

                      kept right on

                                     painting

And became famous

And kept on painting

                              The Horse With Violin In Mouth

And when he finally finished it

he jumped up upon the horse

                                        and rode away   

          waving the violin

And then with a low bow gave it

to the first naked nude he ran across

And there were no strings   

                                     attached

The exhibition was massive.  Impossible to cover thoroughly.  I chose to show you the following, which I selected in my own usual, wacky way. Included are Pictures that have a horse and a violin, or maybe one or the other. Images that I particularly liked. And one only because it has an angel. I hope you like them.

I am beginning with a portrait of the young artist, mostly because he was quite beautiful.

The rest are presented in the only way allowed by Blogger:random.

I always choose a picture I would take home.

This was th one for me.  

   

The Angel

The Horse and the Violin, etc.

Apologies for the crooked pix.  They were taken by a short person in crowded galleries.