Mertz founded "Malice Domestic", a Washington-based organization for women mystery writers, "because she thought men were getting all the prizes.
[12] Following this Mertz earned a series of Agatha Award "Best Novel" nominations, including The Last Camel Died at Noon in 1991; The Snake, the Crocodile, and the Dog in 1992; Night Train to Memphis in 1994; Seeing a Large Cat in 1997; The Ape Who Guards the Balance in 1998; and He Shall Thunder in the Sky in 2000 which also received an Anthony Award "Best Novel" nomination in 2001.
[16] The heroine and her husband Radcliffe Emerson are Egyptologists, while their only biological son Walter (always known as Ramses) is a specialist in ancient Near Eastern languages.
The timeline begins in the 1880s with Amelia's decision to see the world as an unexpectedly wealthy feminist spinster, and ends with the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in late 1922.
[18] Another Peters novel, The Camelot Caper (1969) (also published as Her Cousin John), while not technically a Vicky Bliss story, features Smythe.
[19] Initially an unwilling detective, and not the apparent protagonist, in the first book (The Seventh Sinner), Kirby's quirkiness and middle-aged romantic success generated a following and led to sequels.
[5] The series continued with The Murders of Richard III and Die For Love, each of which featured Jacqueline Kirby plumbing a mystery arising out of a subculture (Ricardians and romance novelists).
[20][21] In Die for Love, Kirby began writing a romance novel, and in Naked Once More, the fourth and final book of the series, has proven to be quite successful in that career.
In Naked Once More, Jacqueline is commissioned to write a sequel to a "famous" prehistoric romance novel,[22] whose author died under mysterious circumstances.