Deeds of the Disturber is the fifth in a series of historical mystery novels, written by Elizabeth Peters and first published in 1988.

The title of the book comes from the ancient Egyptian Hymn to Osiris from the Eighteenth Dynasty: "His sister was his protector / She who drives off the foe / Who foils the deeds of the disturber / By the power of her utterance."

Upon arrival at the dock, Amelia finds that her penurious eldest brother James wants to dump his two children, Percy and Violet, on the Emersons for a few months.

Amelia takes a while to see past the superficial politeness of Percy, and how harshly he treats Ramses.

The museum's night watchman, Albert Gore, lies dead in the mummy exhibit, with party debris scattered around his body.

The Emersons and the police seek the links between those employees and an odd character dressed as an ancient Egyptian Sem priest, wearing a wig and with his face masked, who occasionally disrupts museum visitors.

At a museum event after Oldacre is found, Lord St John reveals that Margaret Minton is the granddaughter of a duke, who got her job by influence, which angers her; later, it becomes clear that she must work as the family has no money.

After nearly a week, Amelia realizes that Minton has been working as a housemaid, unrecognized, in Chalfont House, getting her news dispatches out at night, printed without her byline.

The Earl of Liverpool invites Amelia and Emerson to see the collection of Egyptian antiquities acquired by his father.

They have lunch there the day after the disrupted event at the museum, and they see the extensive Mauldy Manor, with its very old sections and more modern portion.

Before her death, Ayesha tells Amelia that the aristocrats plan an event at Mauldy Manor.

Amelia, Emerson, and Inspector Cuff of Scotland Yard are trapped in the dark cellar room in the oldest part of the Manor.

She tells Cuff to exhume the night watchman's body, as it will reveal he died by an overdose of opium.

Kirkus Reviews did not find the shift of setting from digs in Egypt to the British Museum in London, England, an asset to this novel.

It "lacks the exoticism that lends credibility to a bizarre plot", and parents Amelia and Emerson are getting to be a bit boring, while their son "Ramses is a real treasure" of a character.