Love can be a very frightening thing.
Death on the Nile
by Agatha Christie
Genre: Murder Mystery
About: Linnet Ridgeway has everything. Beauty, riches, confidence. The only thing she lacks: is love. But when her best friend introduces her fiancé, Linnet finds a man worth marrying. As with everything, things go exactly her way and the fiancé marries Linnet instead. Now she really does have everything, including enemies.
The Good
As always with Agatha Christie, the murder is very cleverly thought out. There are a lot of suspects and plenty of secrets Quite a few of the characters surprised me, I really enjoyed Poirot meddling into their lives and the conversations we get with him and many of the women in the story. I thought the setting abroad was really refreshing and of course I loved the isolated murderer-on-a-boat troupe. How Poirot came to the solution (those cryptic clues he gives towards the end!) was really ingenious. Christie knew how to tease her readers. I particularly enjoy when Poirot gives a couple of very well reasoned solutions to the crime only to tell us that: it is not so!
The Bad
I had watched the movie before I read the book so I knew the big twist. In the movie version, the Who was very guessable for me though I remember being surprised by some of the other twists and had much the same feeling with the book. If I hadn't seen the movie, I think I probably would have guessed the Who the same (though definitely I would have been more fooled by the red herrings) but the How was really ingenious and not at all guessable for me.
The Somewhat Iffy
I don't think there needed to be so many characters. There are two subplot romances (one would have been enough) and two Mr F's, as well as characters who are mentioned as possible suspects but who aren't present on the boat - yet you still need to keep them in mind. It's a lot of players to wrap your head around.
I was also confused why Simon saved Linnet from the attempted boulder murder. If he hadn't of acted, Linnet would have been killed without him or Jacqueline dirtying their hands.
Overall
A really clever murder mystery with a whole cast of likely (and unlikely) suspects. The setting and the solution make this a memorable one.
Comments