Death on the Nile

First sentence: "Linnet Ridgeway!" "That's her!" said Mr. Burnaby, the landlord of the Three Crowns. He nudged his companion.

Premise/plot: All is not fair in love or war. This Hercule Poirot mystery is set on a cruise of the Nile river. It is the honeymoon trip for one happy couple--or should I say one "happy" couple. For this happy couple is being stalked/followed by a disgruntled (and dramatic) ex. She is not happy to see HER former fiance marry a now former friend. She even introduced them! These three aren't the only travelers with struggles, traumas, and dramas of their own. Poirot picked quite a bunch to travel with. (Not that he had much say in the matter.) But when bodies start to fall, well, he has his work to do.

My thoughts: I show more LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It is such a great mystery, very complex! Hercule Poirot and Colonel Race find themselves on board a ship on the Nile, they are in interesting company. Poirot notices the tension between some of his fellow travelers from the very start. And as he takes the time to get to know everyone, to have personal chats with almost every one, his unease only increases. He fears that before the trip is over, murder will have been committed. But who shall the victim be? And who the murderer? Meanwhile, Race is on a mission of his own before a body is even found. He is on the trail of a killer, a radical. He's not sure WHO his man is, just knows that he is almost certainly on board, that is where his clues have led him. When the oh-so-wealthy heiress, Linnet Ridgeway, is murdered on her honeymoon with Simon Doyle, there are plenty of suspects. For not all of the passengers on board are exactly strangers to her....

The first part of this one is set in England, but the rest is all set in Egypt.

This one had me from the start. It was so thrilling! Not only was the plot interesting and surprising and wonderful, the characterization was so well done!!! show less

This was just like The Love Boat except you might fall in love or get murdered, and there was no Captain Stubing, or Gopher or Isaac. Otherwise, exactly like The Love Boat.

More and more I love Agatha Christie for her anti-ageism. Not that anyone called it ageism back then. But:

"Leaning over the rail Tim Allerton was saying: 'Anyhow, it's a rotten world...'
Rosalie Otterbourne answered: 'It's unfair; some people have everything.'
Poirot sighed. He was glad that he was no longer young."

I also love how Poirot puts things: "Me, I slept absolutely like the log."

And - I figured this one out! I thought that would be disappointing but it wasn't, because I could never be totally sure, and so really it was only a relief to find I'd been right.

Even on holiday Hercule Poirot cannot help but solve crime. Taking a well deserved break on a cruise down the Nile, Poirot finds his unique skills are needed when Linnet Ridgeway, young, beautiful and ultra wealthy, is discovered shot through the head. Her murder won't be the last on this voyage.

The story takes a while to build up as a there is a lot of background information required for each of the characters to set the stage. I was surprised that I was almost two thirds of the way through the story before the murder occurred. All the foundation laying pays off and it's a race to the end as Poirot collects evidence to tease out who the murderer is on a ship full of suspects. It made me chuckle that Poirot uncovers a few other crimes show more along the way but since they're not related to the murder chooses instead to look the other way. Looking back, the person I originally suspected of the crime is the one who ended up being the murderer. Christie throws in so many red herrings and twists that I doubted myself. Well played!

I listened to the audio book narrated by Kenneth Branagh. He gives a stellar performance once again. I can't wait to see how he translates the story to the screen. show less

The Unforgivable Offence, No Matter What

Famed detective Hercule Poirot attempts to take a holiday in southern Egypt, including a river journey aboard the steamer Karnak from Assuan to Wadi Halfa, but pleasure turns to business when his fellow passenger, the beautiful heiress Linnet Ridgeway - now Linnet Doyle due to her sudden surprise marriage to the commoner Simon Doyle - is found murdered in her honeymoon cabin, and Poirot must determine which passenger is responsible. Agatha Christie isn't kidding when she says in her Author's Foreword, "The book has a lot of characters and a very elaborately worked out plot." With its exotic locales and a whopping sixteen suspects, plus Poirot and his friend Col. Race, and the first murder victim show more herself, Death on the Nile is the most epic of the Poirot novels. Indeed, the large cast becomes something of a detriment. Although each of the characters is clearly defined and depicted, the various plot threads and overlapping crimes, including more than a few red herrings, can be difficult to follow at times. Nonetheless, Christie keeps the story moving with her "elaborately worked out plot," which remains, underneath the mess, deceptively simple. Christie also makes good use of the sprawl. After 17 years, two short story collections and one stage play, from the moment Poirot enters the story if not sooner, we know someone will end up murdered, and so we're willing to wait almost half the novel, while Christie takes her sweet time setting up the cast of characters and dropping clues both to the featured mystery and the subplots, which include not only the side quest crimes, but also several romances, including a love triangle or two. Far from distractions, it is within these intertwined threads where Christie tells her true tales. On the one hand, there is the insufferable, pompous egotism of the PoliSci 101 anarcho-communist Mr. Ferguson, but one feels at least some accordance with him when he directs his free-floating rebel-with-an-infantile-cause hostility toward Mrs. Doyle, surely one of the most repellent murder victims Poirot has ever reluctantly avenged, sympathetic only in comparison to, say, Mr. Ratchett in Murder on the Orient Express (1934). Christie subtly paints Poirot's distaste at solving the murder of such a deserving woman, particularly when the real damsel in distress is the lead suspect and most wronged casualty of Linnet's vanity, her former best friend and Simon's former fiancée, Jacqueline de Bellefort. Nonetheless, as Poirot tells Jacqueline, murder is unforgivable, and justice must be served, and as always, it ultimately is, in one of the clear standouts of M. Poirot's casebook.

[For more on this series, see also my review of Hallowe'en Party (1969).] show less

Bizarrely, my ebook version of this started with a cheery letter from Agatha Christie herself that was part advertisement ("I think...the book is one of the best..."), part a discussion of what inspired the book (trip to Egypt, which I think we all could guess), and part, uh. Talking about how real the characters are to her. Which, okay, she's not entirely wrong -- the three named are among her most fleshed-out, realized characters, although they're surrounded by the usual Christie two-dimensional stock characters. But they're still, at heart, Christie characters and therefore not quiiiiite believable.

Christie also says in the introduction that the plot is intricate and "very elaborately worked out," and while this is true in a purely show more mechanical sense, it's simultaneously unrealistic and not all that difficult to solve. I figured out most of the plot, including multiple side issues, before the first murder happens, although to be fair that isn't until 40% of the book. (I was deeply amused that Poirot's solution relies almost entirely on the clues from after the murder. Apparently Christie didn't want to hang a lampshade on the pointers from before it.)

Some stuff from this really doesn't hit well. I have to mention the racism. I think we all knew that was coming, given the setting and the author, but it's still worth pointing out that this book is racist and colonialist as hell. And while I'm at it, I'll file my standard Christie complaint, which is that she firmly believes that any unattached young women must be either engaged or dead or at the end of the book. So you have this sort of Noah's ark approach to things, where women are thrust into the arms of men they've known for less than a week and who at best have had an entirely off-the-page romance.

There are amusing notes, too. One of the characters is an author whose books aren't selling because they're too full of sex and prurience. You know how the public hates reading about such things, after all! And there's a young man who seems to be a combination of communist, anarchist, misogynist, eugenicist, and just straight-up pro violence. It's like Christie couldn't quite get her ideologies straight and just gave all her least liked beliefs to one character.

Overall, not one of Christie's very best, but certainly in the top quartile. show less

Well finally! I was starting to worry that I was on a total downswing with the Poirot books.
Dumb Witness was really awful. If it hadn't been on my list of Poirot's to read I would have skipped it. Death on the Nile reminds me most of Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. We have a very smart Poirot with an able assist by Colonel Race (Christie fans will remember him from Cards on the Table) with Poirot also figuring out several other mysteries along the way.

We begin with hearing about an American millionaire socialite named Linnet Ridgeway. Used to getting her own way, Linnet it seems has inspired some jealously by some of the local villagers and even among her friends. We get a sense of foreboding with regards to comments others show more make to and about Linnet. We fast forward three months and we have Linnet in Egypt.

I don't want to say more than that because if I say anything else, I feel like I would be spoiling this book for other readers out there. Suffice it say there is a robust cast of characters that have enough detail provided that you find out a great deal about them. We get to read all about these characters and exactly how all of them happened to get to Egypt. Since the title is Death on the Nile, you know that someone is going to be murdered.

I actually liked Poirot quite a lot in this book. One of my other favorite Poirot books is Triangle at Rhodes. I liked it because Poirot at times seems almost prophetic when he warns someone from a planned action they are contemplating. He doles out advice quite a bit in this one. However, it does not sound pompous, just sounds like a man who wants people to be better than what they are in the moment.

The writing was really good, though there were a couple of mention of women and how they act that made me roll my eyes for a good long while. Since it was some of the characters spouting this nonsense it just caused me to ignore them. The flow worked really well and towards the end it felt like you are galloping towards a great finish. Along the way you have Poirot and Race working out other mysteries surrounding these characters.

I have to say I am super proud of myself. I have never been great at figuring out who dun it (though I did in Dumb Witness since it was so obvious) and this time I figured out who committed the big murder and how, and several of the other side mysteries except for one. So hey, at least my record is improving.

The setting of Egypt and the Nile honestly doesn't feel very real while I was reading this book. Probably because I have been to Egypt and on the Nile and Christie does not manage to evoke the wonder you have when standing in front of the pyramids, and looking upon the Sphinx. The heat is not a really oppressive heat, I call it a dry heat. It's worse when humidity is mixed in. This book also doesn't mention the people or the food. Of course it is a very short book so Christie I can see was more focused on setting up the mystery then adding in colorful details about Egypt and it's people.

The ending I was pleased with, though I did hate how once again Poirot just happens to know what a person is thinking to do and just doesn't say a word about it to anyone. Once again I am going to say I prefer Miss Marple's brand of justice. Poirot's brand is definitely dancing in a morally gray area for me. show less

I’m a huge fan of the mystery novels of Agatha Christie, one of the 1st introductions I had to her work was the 1978 film adaptation of Death on the Nile which still today, remains a favorite. When I started reading her novels as a young teenager, I never did get around to it. Though I had it in my complete collection, I was so familiar with the film, had already known ‘who done it’, I just skipped that one.
Well, these snowy last few days seemed like a good time to pick it up and dive into it. The last few Christie’s I’ve read, I’ve been reading the book with the audiobook playing in the background. This one has David Suchet: the actor who portrayed Hercule Poirot on television. He’s very good as an audiobook reader, show more though I do prefer the Christie’s read by Hugh Fraser.
Now Death on the Nile is probably the longest novel Dame Agatha has written. It is full of very interesting and complicated characters. At the core is a fiery love triangle. She writes this very well, all fully fleshed out. The murder doesn’t take place until halfway through the book. The puzzle of the mystery is very intricate. It was interesting, reading it after knowing the story from the film, how she laid it all out for the reader. I do see why this is regarded as one of her best.
I’m going to rewatch the film again, along with the Poirot episode. I’m going to give the new adaptation of Death on the Nile a chance. I’m sure there will be changes, as long as they don’t stray too badly. I hope it brings another generation of readers to discover the works of Agatha Christie. show less