Death Comes as the End (1944)

In a departure from her usual settings Agatha Christie set Death Comes as the End in Egypt around the year 2000BC. It tells the story of a wealthy family headed by mortuary priest Imhotep whose household consists of 3 sons, a daughter recently widowed and various employees and faithful retainers. Having been widowed himself for many years Imhotep returns to the family home from a trip away with a concubine, Nofret. This act seems to trigger an upset in the delicate balance of power and relationships within the household and it’s not long before the body count starts to mount rather alarmingly.

Given that Christie’s second husband was an archaeologist it’s not surprising that she chose this subject to experiment with something new for her writing and I’m sure her access to experts in the field added to the historical accuracy of the setting and lifestyle depictions contained in the novel. And while I did enjoy these details I found the rest of the novel rather flat and uninteresting.

On reflection I think the main reason for this is that the book has no real protagonist and therefore it lacks focus. Ostensibly Imhotep’s daughter Renisenb is, I think, supposed to be the focus of events but she is not a terribly active participant in events and neither is anyone else. The plot really consists of a lot of dialogue in which the household members guess who’s doing all the murdering and pray to the odd god or three. I thought the culprit and their motive fairly easy to pick from the outset and as more and more family members are knocked off it seems blindingly obvious by the end (by virtue of the ‘last man standing’ theory if nothing else).

The thing that I have enjoyed most about my recent re-discovering of Christie’s novels is that the very best of them are clever classic’ whodunnits that stand the test of time and have at least one or two engaging characters who advance the plot in interesting ways. I’m afraid that, for me anyway, Death Comes as the End had neither of these key elements as in addition to the fairly pedestrian plot the characters were fairly one-dimensional and not up to her usual standards. And while I’m sure the historical details included here are accurate even they do not go far enough to allow total immersion in the period (I’d recommend the Egyptian series of [a:Paul Doherty|36619|Paul Doherty|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1204647483p2/36619.jpg] or [a:Wilbur Smith|4043|Wilbur Smith|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1232074977p2/4043.jpg] if you want to lose yourself in ancient Egypt). ( )

After the death of her husband, Renisenb returns to the house of her father, the ka-priest Imhotep. But soon after her father brings home a concubine and everything changes. Dark things that have always been buried now come to the surface, starting with the death of the concubine. Renisenb must face that someone in her family is a murderer – but does she really want to know who it is? Can she afford to stay ignorant, or will that end in her own death?

The murder mystery in this book is classic Agatha Christie - small cast of characters who could have done it, all of them close to the one another. But different from her usual novels, this one is set in Ancient Egypt. And that right there is my problem with this book. Agatha Christie has done a lot of research to write this book and the setting is very authentic, I'll give you that. It’s also as detailed as ever. But that "I'm really there" feeling I have with Agatha Christie's contemporary novels (now kind-of historical), that's not present here. Quite frankly, I've seen the Ancient Egypt setting done far and far better by other authors. It doesn't detract from the rest of the book, just keeps it from being the masterpiece it could have been. The mystery is engaging as always with Agatha Christie’s books and the setting doesn’t seem so important when it gets really going. The ultimate solution is so logical looking back on it, yet I didn’t catch on until the reveal. All in all, I did like this book a lot. ( )

Not your typical Agatha Christie...she based it on a papyrus fragment from Egypt. It tells the tale of an ancient Egyptian family whose members are dying one by one. She weaves in what is know of Egyptian religion and culture. Well done and a quick fun read.

I think I have rarely enjoyed a Christie title more than this one. But I don't remember ever reading it before and that may be the clue to why it felt so fresh.

I don't remember whether Christie ever gave a historical setting like this to any other novel.
She tells us in an "author's note" at the beginning where the plot and setting came from.

The action of this book takes place on the West bank of the Nile at Thebes in Egypt about 2000 BC. Both place and time are incidental to the story.

Any other place at any other time would have served as well: but it so happened that the inspiration of both characters and plot was derived from two or three Egyptian letters of the XI Dynasty, found about 20 years ago by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in a rock tomb opposite Luxor, and translated by Professor (then Mr) Battiscombe Gunn in the Museum’s Bulletin.

When Imhotep returns to his family in Thebes with his new concubine Nofret he unleashes forces for evil within the family that have lain dormant for years.
As the scribe Hori says to Renisenb, recently returned to the family home after the death of her husband, and having been away for 8 years:

You do not understand, Renisenb. There is an evil that comes from outside, that attacks so that all the world can see, but there is another kind of rottenness that breeds from within–that shows no outward sign. It grows slowly, day by day, till at last the whole fruit is rotten–eaten away by disease.

When Imhotep leaves again for three months, leaving Norfret behind, the forces are unleashed and the murders begin. One after another, family members whom the reader suspects of the first murder are themselves attacked or killed, until there are so few left to suspect. And then Christie plays her trump card.

I saw a fellow blogger comment the other day about how this was the best Agatha Christie title she had ever read, and I can understand why. The plot and whodunnit aspects are engrossing. ( )

I guessed whodunit. Based on one sentence. I also felt a distance between me and the characters. But I did get some idea of what living in Egypt was like millennia ago. ( )