Amelia Peabody, archaeologist and woman extraordinaire, should have greeted the approaching excavation with transports of joy. Nothing in the world could compare with exploring the muddy, musty corridors of some bat-infested pyramid. And at Dahshoor, to which she was headed, there existed some particularly fine specimens.

But Amelia, accompanied by her quixotic husband Emerson and Ramses, their elusive son, feels an awful, nameless foreboding as she stands upon the decks of the ship that bears them across waters of the Mediterranean towards Egypt.

Perhaps it has something to do with what transpired the last time they investigated the ruins of the Black Pyramid. On that infamous occasion they came face-to-face with Sethos, that chameleon-like villain otherwise known as The Master Criminal. While successful in depriving this "genius of crime" of his ill-gotten treasure, they were thwarted in their attempts to capture him. He escaped into the night like a wily serpent, revenge embroidered upon his countenance.

It is inevitable that The Master Criminal should come face-to-face with the inimitable Amelia Peabody again, but this time it is not antiquities he is after, but Amelia herself!