Barbara Michaels (1927–2013)

Possible Trigger Lots of Drug Abuse
I have read this author for more year than I care to think about. I own and have read everything she had written as Barbara Michaels. Most of these are chillingly wonderful, haunted house/ghost stories. Sadly. something very bad must have been going on in her life at the time she sat down to pen this. I borrowed this one from the library....and my friend that works there told me that she wasn't going to tell me much about the book ...but that it was "different". That was the understatement of the entire century. Quite frankly, it was probably the worst thing I have ever read by ANYONE. It was like a continuous furious rant at life. The very last thing I ever expected of an Elizabeth Peters book is for it to make me depressed and anxious. Reading about a heroin drug smuggling operation south of the border, LSD trips, the effects of drug abuse, and even sadism isn't in any way the norm from this author. It's not that I can't or won't read about those things, but when I do, it's because I intentionally chose to do so. Think about how you would feel if you bought what was supposed to be an inspirational romance in a Christian bookstore and discovered that you were reading hard-core porn instead. This book was written in 1971 and Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels passed away in 1977 so maybe things were already going bad in her world. If you are an "old" fan, you can probably read this with sympathy for whatever caused this wonderful writer to pen this "toxic garbage". If you are a new reader...please read her earlier books, like [Ammie, Come Home], my absolute favorite, and [Stitches in Time] both that she wrote as Barbara Michaels, or her Amelia Peabody series that was written as Elizabet Peters...but please know that this one is as off her norm as the sun is from the Earth.… (more)

The Amelia Peabody series has been a favourite since I was little and listening to the audiobooks with my mother; Barbara Rosenblat does a beautiful job bringing them to life.

While Amelia is very much the definition of an unreliable narrator, and her perspective is very much flavoured by her nationality and the era, these things are well written to make it obvious to the reader that they are true, and Amelia herself is a delight (in all her occasionally disastrous glory). The character dynamics and relationships are wonderfully engaging, and the mystery fascinating and alarming.

The conclusion sets up the next book in the series in excellent fashion without leaving any feeling of things being left hanging.… (more)