Author: Agatha Christie
Title: Death On The Nile
Year of publication: 1937
Page count: 333
Rating: ★★★
You know how most kids are obsessed with either dinosaurs or space? I went through phases during which I was plenty interested in those too, but my most enduring obsession was Ancient Egypt. The mummification process, their deities, the pyramids, cat worship, female rulers… it all fascinated me, ever since I can remember. Growing up, everyone knew, Egypt was my thing. And now, in my thirties, I have finally planned the trip I have been dreaming of my whole life. It does not include a Nile cruise, and the Cataract Hotel, where Christie stayed and set part of the story, was way out of my budget… still, this novel seemed apropos.
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is vacationing in Aswan, and set to tour along the Nile on a steamer, on which he is approached by young, gorgeous, charming, staggeringly wealthy and newlywed socialite Linnet Doyle, née Ridgeway. She is on her honeymoon with her former best friend’s ex-fiancé, and the abandoned lover Jacqueline is bitterly resentful of the couple, and has taken to stalking them wherever they go, following them all the way to Egypt. Poirot declines the commission of trying to deter this hounding, but even on vacation, he can’t not get involved when a murder takes place…
“Look at the moon up there. You see her very plainly, don’t you? She’s very real. But if the sun were to shine you wouldn’t be able to see her at all. It was rather like that. I was the moon… When the sun came out, Simon couldn’t see me anymore… He was dazzled. He couldn’t see anything but the sun—Linnet.”
This was my second full-length Poirot story, after reading and pretty much hating Christie’s debut novel The Mysterious Affair At Styles. Blessedly, in this story of love, jealousy, intrigue and betrayal, Poirot is still arrogant, but less insufferable, his sidekick isn’t infuriatingly useless, and even though red herrings abound, the reader is given access to the clues needed to solve the whodunit. I deduced the twist in the very first chapter, based on nothing but a very strong hunch, but Christie still kept me turning the pages to see if I was right, and how she would make it all fit.
“Love can be a very frightening thing.”
“That is why most great love stories are tragedies.”
The pacing, especially in the beginning, is as languid as the titular Nile, but I enjoyed not being thrown into the cozy murder mystery right away—Christie took her time to set up each character and give them all some depth, mystery, and motive, without then having to waste too much time on that when the body count starts rising. All the players were developed and distinct enough to easily keep them straight, which was helpful, because when I said that there are red herrings aplenty, I meant that it gets convoluted: Jewel thieves, bigamists, political agitators, hidden identities, alcoholics, cleptomaniacs… just about everyone on that steamer has a secret, Christie has fun with lots of foreshadowing, and thanks to an ingenious alibi, even infallible Poirot is on the wrong track for a while.
“It often seems to me that’s all detective work is, wiping out your false starts and beginning again.”
“Yes, it is very true, that. And it is just what some people will not do. They conceive a certain theory, and everything has to fit into that theory. If one little fact will not fit it, they throw it aside. But it is always the facts that will not fit in that are significant.”
As for the reason I read this novel in the first place—the setting—well, that left a bit to be desired, since most of the action takes place on the steamer, and the local flavor, whenever present, was decidedly too racist for my taste. Still, it was quite clear that Christie drew inspiration from her own travels and had seen all these remarkable ancient monuments for herself… I will be visiting many of these spots, and can’t wait to have my own adventure along the Nile, preferably without any homicides.
watercolorstain 