Swept away by Egyptian currents. On reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.
Spoilers abound! Unless you wanna know who the killer is.
I’m ashamed to say that I had never got into Agatha Christie, but on a recent book sale I did come across Death on the Nile and I grabbed it so I can stack it into my giant-ass TBR pile. I finally worked through the stack and managed to finish the book within a day. I do think Agatha Christie’s books are easy to read, but not that easy to solve.
I have to admit that when I was a kid, my parents rented out the VHS of the 1978 movie starring Peter Ustinov as the impenetrable Poirot. I have to admit that I never really understood these movies. And the violence were censored during that time, so I didn’t really know who died. But I did remember in the back of my mind who was the murderer. Upon the reading of the book, maybe this distant infantile memory helped me solve the crime (I’d like to think that this is the first mystery book that I solved), but perhaps I was intelligent enough to see where the story was going.
The turbulent current of the Nile, and the feverish temperature of Egypt
Linnet Ridgeway had everything — she’s hot af, rich, business smart and rich. Did I mention she was rich? I mean she wasn’t just like MC Hammer rich, she was like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs combined sorta rich, even though she never really put a finger to work in her life. Some people really just had it all. She was about to get married to some other rich dude who owns one of those English country mansions.
But a visit from a friend really just put her plans to shit, because when her old friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort dropped to beg a for job for her new unemployed fiancée, Simon Doyle, Linnet threw caution to the wind and decided that he wanted to marry broke-ass bitch Simon instead. Simon’s good-looking to be fair, and he was more than willing to dump also broke-ass bitch Jacqueline over a rich, beautiful heiress like Linnet Ridgeway. Within months Linnet Ridgeway became Linnet Doyle and the couple decided to go on a honeymoon which passes through the banks of the Nile in Egypt.
Did I mention Linnet was filthy rich? Well, she is mmmkay.
Jacqueline is still sore though, so she decided to follow the new couple around just to annoy the shit out of them. The plan really worked and the newly married couple was unhinged. Jackie just somehow knows where they are, despite their best laid plans to shake her off. In a temperamental episode in the boat, Jackie had way too much to drink and ended up shooting Simon on the leg.
Linnet though, was discovered dead the next morning, shot through the head. Fortuitously, Poirot was in the same boat and was ready to take on the challenge of another mystery.
Sheer murder escapism amidst the sand and water
In a typical murder mystery fashion, there’s a lot going on here, not just the murder of Linnet Doyle, but also the case of her stolen pearl necklace, an inspector coming on board to arrest a potential terrorist and a couple of other murders, not as shocking as the first, but just as significant. And then there’s all the human drama between the characters in the boat — some will fall in love, some will loathe each other and others will just exist as red herrings.
No, I didn’t figure out all the mysteries contained in the book — like who was the terrorist (It was the Italian Richetti, who was a bit too defensive when Linnet picked up his telegram), or how the maid was killed (Jackie) or who actually stole the pearl necklace (Tim Allerton, who was a bit apprehensive of sitting next to Poirot). Death on the Nile is sheer escapism as we also need to suspend the belief that such events can take place in one night, though they only serve to distract us away from the main mystery of who killed Linnet Ridgeway.
The rest, I kind of figured out though. When Poirot came across Jacqueline and Simon on the dance floor months before the murder, and the rushed and forced meeting of Jacqueline with Linnet who have not seen each other in months, plus the fact that Jacqueline was able to know Linnet and Simon’s itinerary, you can already deduce that something just ain’t right. At the moment of the shooting, the fact that Simon was shot in the leg gives the opportunity to fake the shot momentarily before he commits the actual murder.
But the fact that it is not as difficult to figure out doesn’t mean it has less of an entertainment value for its readers. Death on the Nile is rich of it as Agatha Christie is an expert in weaving murder mysteries in exotic locations. The heat of Egypt and its unsettling sand-worn temples give the atmosphere an oppressive air, not to mention the imposing presence of the Nile which has been swallowing souls for centuries, but this is a setting so far removed from what we are used to that anything is possible. I had the same sentiment reading Murder on the Orient Express, even though the setting is the exact opposite: claustrophobic and treacherously cold instead of expansive and blisteringly hot.
Though the story can be formulaic, but before the murder happens, the novel was human drama in the course of a crescendo: we feel for Jacqueline who was a ticking time bomb, and Poirot’s attempt to divert her against the course of destruction; we try to figure out whether Linnet and Simon are truly happy, fostering the jealousies all around them; we speculate what Pennington is really up to with his legal mumbo jumbo in relation to all this wealth. The intentions of the characters here are credible, and it is not improbable that a husband would murder his wife in cold blood.
Is it Agatha Christie’s best book? Don’t know I haven’t read the rest, but to me, Murder on the Orient Express is still a slightly better work.
