Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades. To find out more, visit agathachristie.com or @officialagathachristie on Instagram.
The tranquility of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, and beautiful. A girl who had everything. . . until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: "I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger." Yet under the searing heat of the Egyptian sun, nothing is ever quite what it seems. A sweeping mystery of love, jealousy, and betrayal, Death on the Nile is one of Christie's most legendary and timeless works.
I suppose for an author like Agatha Christie it's hard not to go into reading one of her books for the first time without some preconceptions. I had seen "Murder on the Orient Express" and based on the movie thought there must be a lot of meandering, elaborate, detailed prose intent on distracting readers from the mystery. Instead, I found a mystery that was intent on being as straight-to-the-point as possible, while still somehow manipulating readers' perceptions of what's happening so that the ending could still be a surprise! The storytelling very much depends on the characters and their dynamic relationships with one another, and Christie demonstrates that by centralizing dialogue as her main technique of telling the story. Meaning, most of the story happens via Poirot explaining his theories, or the characters discussing what is happening/what happened to each other.
To that end, we are introduced to a whole cast of characters right off the bat in the very first chapter, and it can be quite difficult to keep track of names and motivations and relations. It is overwhelming at first, but once all the characters enter the boat together, and we get the story told more centrally through Poirot's eyes, it's less overwhelming. This technique also works surprisingly well for Christie's intentions with this murder mystery—which is to say, it does help build a surprising and compelling narrative of love and jealousy and grief, with a whole host of people with motivations to do less-than-honourable things!
Maybe it's because I've watched too many crime shows or episodes of Dateline with my mom, but I wasn't expecting to get to know the character who gets murdered as well as we did. The murder happens about right in the middle of the story. Because of this, we sort of have a chance to still be surprised by her death, and also to try and figure out who committed the crime. I found this to be effective as well, because it definitely would have been harder to write a 300+ page book that's just people trying to hide what they did and Poirot trying to uncover the truth; when only half of that page allotment is dedicated to that, the rest feels like a different novel of suspense and laying down some motive and background that can still be helpful in misleading readers for a surprising ending.
There was a moment, there, that I thought the ending would be unsatisfying. For just a small second, it seemed like Poirot had found the murderer, and it turned out to be someone who wasn't satisfying but still fit the bill. Alas, that was not the case, and Poirot/Christie laid out all the details we forgot to think of closely or even missed to create an ending that was shocking and satisfactory. I am so glad she makes that move, of framing someone who fits the bill but in an unsatisfying way—doing so makes the reveal of who really did it so much more rewarding and shocking, without increasing the commercialized "shock value." Meaning, the ending is satisfying because it is satisfying, not because it is shocking. It is no wonder Christie has sold as many books as she has—I'm quite thinking of buying more Hercule Poirot mysteries myself!
For more Agatha Christie, visit agathachristie.com or @officialagathachristie on Instagram.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
Comments
Post a Comment