our plucky Victorian Egyptologist, together with her devastatingly handsome and brilliant husband Radcliffe, in another exciting escapade Swapping the stifling heat and dust of Egypt for the cooler climes of London, adventuress Amelia Peabody finds herself plunged into an escapade set in the dignified surroundings of the British Museum, and as ever, she is aided and abetted by her irascible husband Emerson and precocious son Ramses. First of all a night watchman is found dead in the Mummy Room of the museum, a look of horror frozen on his face and very soon panic spreads through the capital while the gutter press ask the question 'Can Fear Kill?'. And before Amelia can respond with an appropriate answer, a pair of dissolute aristocrats with a shady past appear in her life together with supernatural curses, a lady of dubious reputation with a link to Emerson's bachelor past and a homicidal maniac disguised as an ancient Sem priest - but they are only the very tip of this most singular mystery. And as Amelia closes in on the murderer, Emerson and Ramses must try to keep her from adding herself to the list of victims...