Ra the Mighty 2 – The Great Tomb Robbery

The Great Tomb Robbery is the second Ra the Mighty mystery by Amy Butler Greenfield, a detective story for 7 year olds narrated by the most self-satisfied cat in ancient Egypt.

What happens

Ra is Pharaoh's Cat. He has attendants. He has perfume (jasmine with overtones of lotus, since you ask). He does not wash himself, because he has people for that, and he will explain this at length to anybody who raises the subject.

His best friend is Khepri, a scarab beetle who travels between his ears and rolls dung for a living. Khepri wants cases. Ra wants a nap and another bowl of spiced ibex. There's Miu as well, a kitchen cat with a torn ear, who has firm views about what Ra's comfortable life is doing to his character.

Then a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is ransacked, and Ra runs clean out of excuses.

The joke that keeps giving is that Ra is a genuinely good detective who would honestly rather not be. He has already worked out the missing loaves and the mysterious stranger without getting off his cushion. He simply refuses to count any of it as work.

The Egypt here is properly Egyptian rather than a pyramid painted on a backdrop. There are scarab amulets over mummies' hearts, a palace at Thebes, days of sailing up the Nile. A child who has done Ancient Egypt at school will keep spotting things they know, which is very satisfying indeed at seven.

It's also a real mystery with a real solution, so your reader gets to have a go at it themselves. The comedy comes from three friends bickering rather than from anything slapstick, which wears rather better.

There's nothing here to worry anybody. A robbery, some suspects, and tombs, which means mummies. Some children find those creepy and most find them brilliant.

What to read next

If your reader likes knowing how a partnership began, the earlier case is in the library and it's the better place to start. That's the first Ra the Mighty mystery, in which jewellery goes missing at the palace and Khepri has to work extremely hard to get his friend interested.