Death on the Nile
BOOK REVIEW
Death on the Nile - Agatha Christie
Surprisingly underwhelming and unworthy of the Queen of Crime tag
A typically impromptu bookstore wander was halted at the sight of two massive shelves brimming with Agatha Christie novels. I had already decided that my next mental meal would be of the fictional genre and a little phone research - which taught me that the author is the bestselling fiction writer of all time, at over 2 billion copies sold - made the prospect of a Christie story even more appetizing.
The choice of Death on the Nile in particular was a process of elimination as, despite the store's assortment, some of Christie's most famous works were not available. Thus I browsed online to match a title in front of me with various top 10 lists. "High body count" seemed a suitably titillating criteria and so the selection was made.
Christie starts off by spinning from one character to the next in unrelated tableaus, by way of introducing the large cast in their order of appearance. The main story begins as the characters, mostly unfamiliar with each other, gather in Aswan for the commencement of a river cruise holiday. Already there is some scandal, for a rich young heiress has married what was until recently the fiancé of one of her closest friends. The abandoned party, heartbroken and incandescent, has followed them to Egypt, hoping her presence will be ruinous to their honeymoon.
“ ‘Love is not everything, Mademoiselle,’ Poirot said gently. ‘It is only when we are young that we think it is.’ “
Unexpectedly, the book reads not as a hair-raising crime thriller, but as a light children's detective story. None of the characters are meaningfully developed and the dialogue, though plentiful, is generally vapid. The first murder on board does not cause the hysterical pandemonium one might anticipate but instead the "stiff upper lip" emotional detachment that may characterize the era of Christie's writings.
More frustrating is the classic detective story flaw: every revelation by detective Hercule Poirot informs the reader of information or clues that were previously unbeknownst. Perhaps this is a necessary literary method to retain the element of mystery but I always find such grand reveals rather unpalatable.
On the whole, the novel is a page turner in the least complimentary sense of the phrase, being that one can devour chapters at a time without filling a satisfying portion of mental nutrition. I contrast this with the investigative crime writing of this New Yorker article, which I read over the same weekend and haunted me for hours afterward.
Death on the Nile was a poor first impression of Christie's writing, and I shan't rush to offer her a second chance. As the saying goes (or is adapted), life is too short to read inferior books.
- NP, February 2024