This edition published October 2020 by Harper Collins.
Originally published 1937.
From the cover of the book:
The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head.
She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.
Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’
Yet in this exotic setting nothing is ever quite what it seems…
***********
Hercule Poirot's holiday in Egypt is disrupted when glamorous heiress Linnet Doyle (née Ridgeway) is shot through the head, and her valuable string of pearls looted, during a cruise down the Nile .
Linnet seemed to have everything - beauty, style and money - but when she stole her best friend's fiancé, Simon Doyle, she made a dangerous enemy. For the wronged woman, Jacqueline de Bellefort, followed the happy couple on their honeymoon trip, vowing to get her revenge.
Jacqueline is the obvious suspect, but although she certainly shot and injured her former lover that fateful night, she has a cast-iron alibi for the murder of Linnet. Can Poirot get to the bottom of what really happened on the Karnak?
Death on the Nile is one of Christie's finest mysteries, and one of my earliest forays into the work of the Queen of Crime. It was an easy pick to celebrate this month's #ReadChristie prompt of 'Biggest Impact on You as a Young Reader', and it has been far too long since I last read it!
The plot throws together a motley collection of genteel and larger than life characters, some of whom have murky motives for being aboard the Karnak that involve a lot more than sight-seeing - a nice middle-class mother with devoted son, dodgy financiers, anarchists, a light-fingered American society blue-blood, an amorous Austrian doctor, a dipsomaniac authoresses with despairing daughter, and a variety of companions surround the troubled love-triangle at the centre of the plot.
There is much fun to be had as Poirot is reunited with perspicacious old pal and Secret Service Agent Colonel Race, and they traverse difficult conversations with murder and larceny suspects who they are sure are not revealing all they know. Of course, Poirot eventually gets to the truth, casting aside the many red herrings, once he has discovered quite what falling masonry, a gun thrown overboard, running feet, mysterious splashings in the night, a blackmailing maid, a decorative rosary, and an empty bottle of nail varnish all reveal about who killed Linnet and pilfered her precious baubles.
This book has everything - arguably Christie's best ensemble cast (certainly my favourite - how can you fail to be charmed by Mrs Allerton, Cornelia Robson, and the flamboyant Salome Otterbourne), a devilishly twisty plot filled with passion and precise planning, and a gloriously exotic setting. It is rich in psychological themes and dysfunctional relationships (especially when it comes to reflections on love), and wonderfully on-point when it comes to time and place.
I chose to revisits this gem via the audiobook narrated appropriately by David Suchet (my favourite little Belgian Detective of them all), and it was an utter joy from start to finish.
Death on the Nile is available to buy now in multiple formats.
About the author:
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English with another billion in over 70 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 80 crime novels and short story collections, 20 plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
No comments:
Post a Comment