A review by sharkybookshelf
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

5.0

Linnet Ridgeway has everything - she’s young, beautiful and rich - until she loses her life on a luxury cruise along the Nile, a cruise with Hercule Poirot as a fellow passenger…

This was one of my favourites before starting my Sharky Reads Christie project, so I’ve read it several times and came into it knowing whodunnit, how and why. But that didn’t take away from the pleasure of reading it - it’s such a clever puzzle that it’s great to see how Christie weaves in all the clues (incidentally, I never came close to solving it the first time I read it), and remains a favourite.

I had forgotten, however, the little side plots, and they kept me on my toes. Hercule Poirot is on fine form, both as detective (naturally) and match-maker - it never fails to amuse me in older books when, out-of-the-blue, two young people proclaim they are absolutely in love and intend to marry after having known each other less than a week.

The Egyptian luxury cruise setting works well - obviously it creates a closed-room situation, the murderer must be on the boat and all the passengers are potential suspects, but it also firmly establishes the milieu in which (most of) the passengers belong, a sort of shorthand to tell us more about the characters themselves. This is not the book to read if you want detailed descriptions of the various sites they visit or even just Egypt generally, but nobody is picking up an Agatha Christie as a travelogue.

A clever, puzzling closed-door murder mystery, with a glamorous setting and a distinctive cast of potential suspects.