Tag: Death on the Nile

Top Ten Tuesday: Books with My Favourite Colour on the Cover

Published on by Margaret10 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.

The topic this week is Books with My Favourite Colour on the Cover. Here they are in various shades of red:

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz – a prime example of a puzzle-type of crime fiction combining elements of the vintage-style golden age crime novel with word-play and cryptic clues and allusions to Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s also a novel within a novel, with mystery piled upon mystery. I loved it.

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz – the second book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series in which Daniel Hawthorne, an ex-policeman, now a private investigator, who the police call in to help when they have a case they call a ‘sticker’. What I found particularly interesting was the way that Anthony Horowitz inserted himself into the fiction, recruited by Hawthorne to write a book about him and the cases he investigates.

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz – the fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound, aided by Horowitz, as a fictional character.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – historical fiction, the story of Thomas Cromwell, the son of a blacksmith, and his political rise, set against the background of Henry VIII’s England and his struggle with the Pope over his desire to marry Anne Boleyn. This is the first in the Wolf Hall trilogy, based on the life of Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485-1540), who rose from obscurity to become chief minister of King Henry VIII of England.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, a pre-Second World War crime fiction novel. It shows Agatha Christie’s interest in Egypt and archaeology and also reflects much of the flavour and social nuances of the pre-war period. In it she sets a puzzle to solve –  who shot Linnet Doyle, the wealthy American heiress? Although the novel is set in Egypt, an exotic location, it is essentially a ‘locked room mystery’.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Chistie in which Poirot investigates the death of Simeon Lee, the head of the Lee family. None of his family like him, in fact most of them hate him and there are plenty of suspects for his murder. He is found dead with his throat cut in a locked room – locked from the inside.

Wild Fire by Ann Cleeves, the 8th and last book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series. I have loved this series ever since I read the first book, Raven Black, back in 2010. And because I began reading the books before they were televised my picture of Inspector Jimmy Perez is drawn from them rather than from the dramatisations. There are some significant changes  between the TV dramatisations and the books. I love the books, but still enjoyed the TV adaptions.

Red Bones by Ann Cleeves, the third book in her Shetland Quartet. It’s set on Whalsay, where two young archaeologists, excavating a site on Mima Williams’s land, discover human bones. They are sent away for testing – are they an ancient  find or are the bones more contemporary?

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer, crime fiction. This is an absolutely gripping battle of wits between Stephen aged twelve and serial killer Arnold Avery as they exchange letters about the whereabouts of Stephen’s uncle’s body.

The Sun Sister by Lucinda Riley – the only book on this list that I haven’t yet read. It’s the sixth book in The Sven Sisters series, the story of love and loss, inspired by the mythology of the famous star constellation. It’s one of my TBRs only because I’m reading the series in order and so far I’ve read the first three books.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie: Book Review

Published on by Margaret6 Comments

Death on the Nile is a pre-Second World War novel, first published in 1937. It shows Agatha Christie’s interest in Egypt and archaeology and also reflects much of the flavour and social nuances of the pre-war period. In it she sets a puzzle to solve –  who shot Linnet Doyle, the wealthy American heiress? Although the novel is set in Egypt, an exotic location, it is essentially a ‘locked room mystery’, as the characters are passengers on the river-steamer SS Karnak, cruising on the Nile. Amongst them is the famous Hercule Poirot, a short man dressed in a white silk suit, a panama hat and carrying a highly ornamental fly whisk with a sham amber handle ‘a funny little man (pages 37 – 38). Linnet is the girl who has everything, good looks and wealth:

A girl with golden hair and straight autocratic features ‘a girl with a lovely shape’ (page 3). She was used to being looked at, being admired, to being the centre of the stage wherever she went. (page 41)

Linnet has recently married Simon Doyle, who was previously engaged to her friend, Jacqueline. This sets in motion a series of events that results in Linnet’s death. When Jacqueline follows them on their trip down the Nile she is the obvious suspect, driven by her jealousy of Linnet. Also on board are an imperious American, Miss Van Schuyler, her niece Cornelia Robson and Miss Bowers, her companion; a novelist Mrs Salome Otterbourne and her daughter, Rosalie; Mrs Allerton and her son, Tim; Linnet’s American solicitor, an excitable Italian archaeologist, a radical English socialist and a young English solicitor.

Poirot is on holiday, but he finds himself discussing the nature of criminals and motives for murder with Mrs Allerton. He says the most frequent motive is money:

that is to say gain in its various ramifications. Then there is revenge, and love, and fear ‘and pure hate, and benefice’. (page 83)

The motive in this case seems straightforward, looking at who gains from Linnet’s death, but this is a complicated plot (when is one of Christie’s books not complicated?) and following on from Linnet’s murder, her maid is also found dead, Linnet’s pearls are missing, several characters are not what them seem and with the arrival of Colonel Race, a member of the British Secret Service, it seems there is also an international murderer and agitator on board. Poirot knew

that Race was a man of unadvertised goings and comings. He was usually to be found in one of the out-posts of Empire where trouble was brewing. (page 120)

It does seem a very unlikely plot, dependent on precise timing, but Poirot works his way through the significant facts and arrives at the truth. He tells Race that

This is a crime that need audacity, swift and faultless execution, courage, indifference to danger and a resourceful, calculating brain. This crime wasn’t safe! It hung on a razor edge, It needed boldness. (page 272)

All in all, an enjoyable puzzle to solve, most of which I’d worked out along with Poirot.