As the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Sadly, this is the 20th and last in the delightful Amelia Peabody series. Elizabeth Peters—real name Barbara Mertz who also wrote as Barbara Michaels—died in 2013, leaving the manuscript of The Painted Queen unfinished. Her good friend, mystery writer Joan Hess, has completed it with great aplomb. 

The cheeky Amelia and her outrageously handsome and acerbic husband Radcliffe Emerson (a world renowned Egyptologist better known to the Egyptians as The Father of Curses) are on their way to the Egyptian archeological site Amarna to finish a job. While stopped over in Cairo, Peabody luxuriates in a bubble bath where she is interrupted by a man wearing a gold-rimmed monocle intent on doing her harm. The would-be assassin is thwarted by a knife protruding from his back (But by who?). When the Amelia and Radcliffe's son Ramses admits that he, too, was the victim of a murder attempt by a man wearing a gold-rimmed monocle, they realize their lives are in danger.

It is 1912 and the Emersons travel by boat down the Nile to Amarna, where they learn that a magnificent bust of Queen Nefertiti has just been discovered—and just as quickly, disappeared, along with the boss of the site who has an addiction to peppermint schnapps. As Peabody and Emerson chase shady characters down the back alleys and narrow streets of Cairo, and across the sands of Egypt’s deserts, they run into many strange individuals, including a hairy missionary, a naked man, and more men with gold-rimmed monocles with murder on their mind.

Many favorite characters of this series make appearances, including David, Ramses best friend; Selim and Daoud, the Emerson’s faithful retainers; their lovable but grouchy cook, Fatima; and, of course, the master criminal, Sethos, who has a crush on Peabody.

God speed Amelia. You’ll be missed.