The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters

A while ago, I realised that I read this series, and most mystery serieses these days, as novels of setting and character, not as puzzles. Which was good, because this book was wonderful as a chance to spend more time with Amelia Peabody, family and friends. But as mystery, it left something to be desired. A few extremely incompetant and not at all mysterious tomb robbers, a couple of murders at the beginning that were immediately explained and that no-one really cared about anyways, and a completely unrelated spying diversion, also quite lacking in mystery. And the tomb-robber plot and the spy plot didn't really fit well together. I had the feeling that they were originally intended to be two books, and she awkwardly glued them together after realising neither could support a book on its own. Really, rather carelessly done.