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Death on the Nile

a Hercule Poirot Mystery
Mar 16, 2012danielestes rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
What constantly surprises me about reading Agatha Christie (apart from solving the mystery) is how the most important clues seem to absent-mindedly stick in my head even though there's misdirection everywhere else. Death on the Nile is involved. There are stories within stories, all overlapping one another, and I wasn't able to keep track of it all on the first read. The book itself seems to acknowledge this complexity by resolving the separate accounts one at a time at the story's finale. And when it came time to reveal the murderer... alas, all the clues were right there the whole time and it made perfect sense! The location of Egypt and the Nile is intended to represent an exotic, away-from-civilization locale, which mostly succeeds. Egypt during this period might very well be a vast track of empty desert with local merchants scattered throughout because that's how it's portrayed in the book and not much more. And as always, Poirot is the grand-master of human observation, with just the right touch of conceit, which makes him a pleasure to read.