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Poirot goes on a cruise along the Nile, where he sees a tragedy in the making but is unable to prevent it. After one of the passengers turns up murdered, he has a very short time in which to solve the mystery before the ship reaches the nearest port.
One of Christie's best books, with vivid, memorable characters, an excellent puzzle, and some real emotional heft.
The central characters, apart from Poirot, are introduced before the Nile cruise and some time earlier. Linnet Ridgeway is a beautiful, young, fabulously wealthy socialite who's generous and means well but is also high-handed and blinkered by privilege. Her best friend, Jacqueline, is poor, passionate, and quick-witted. Jacqueline's fiance, Simon, is also poor, not terribly bright or sophisticated, but very handsome. Jacqueline loves him with a consuming, somewhat scary passion.
When we meet them on the Nile Cruise, Linnet is married to Simon and Jacqueline is stalking them. Poirot tries to warn her off this path, to no avail. So when Linnet turns up dead with a bullet in her head, suspicion should point straight to Jacqueline (her enemy) or Simon (who will inherit her money). But at the time that Linnet was murdered, both Simon and Jacqueline were in the presence of multiple others for most of it... and then Jacqueline shot Simon in the leg! After that, he had a broken leg and she was sedated and watched by a nurse. So they (and some of the people who witnessed all this) have unimpeachable alibis. Is there anyone else onboard who might have wanted to kill Linnet?
This trio isn't just a set of Christie's best characters, but great characters in general. They feel very alive. They're joined by a very fun set of other characters, of whom my favorite was Cornelia, who's poor and plain and helping out her rich aunt and is in a Cinderella situation, but loves traveling and is actually having a wonderful time. Others include a young angry Communist, a has-been author of erotic novels, and a soup-slurping German doctor. Everyone has secrets.
As it turns out, it was Jacqueline and Simon all along, in a remarkably clever plan concocted by Jacqueline and executed by Simon, depending mostly on a fake leg shot followed by a real one. Simon was a greedy sociopath who was going to marry Linnet and then murder her regardless so he could get her money, and so Jacqueline came up with her own workable murder plot to stop him from carrying out his own stupid one.
At the end, Jacqueline kills Simon and then herself, to spare them both the trial and execution. For her part, it was like the trope where someone's been bitten by a zombie and is starting to turn, and they have to put themselves down. She was too dangerous to be allowed to go free, but everything had been stacked against her to get her to that place. She loved Simon beyond reason and morality and friendship, and she destroyed herself for him. He wasn't remotely worth it.
The book ends with Linnet's body being brought out, and that's heartbreaking too. She had her flaws but they were very human ones. In the end she died not because of anything she'd done, but because she had something that a sociopath wanted. Everything that made her life seem perfect and enviable was actually a horrible trap. Her wealth got her murdered, her beauty didn't a make a difference, one of her friends was stealing from her and another was plotting her death, and her handsome devoted husband thought of her as object to be used and discarded.
There's a pair of romances that form a counterpoint to the Linnet/Simon/Jacqueline triangle. One, which parallels the Simon/Jacqueline pairing, is Tim, a somewhat weak young man who's committed crimes, matched with Rosalie, a strong-willed and more moral young woman. But that works out better because his crimes are nonviolent and he's willing to give it up, and her love isn't of the "abandon all morals" type.
The other is another love triangle of sorts. Cornelia, the Cinderella girl, is courted by Ferguson, the angry Communist (hilariously, he turns out to be an incognito lord in dirty clothes who really is a Communist) and by Dr. Bessner, the German doctor. She chooses Dr. Bessner, who unlike Ferguson is not rich or handsome or young, but appreciates the hell out of her and will give her a life she'll enjoy, healing the sick and learning all sorts of interesting things. You can tell how happy they'll be together.
Ferguson expresses his bafflement over her choice to Poirot, who tells him that Cornelia is a woman of original mind and he probably hasn't met one before. (Implied: because his social circle is a circle jerk.)
The whole thing is a comedic and happy mirror image of the Jacqueline/Linnet/Simon triangle of beautiful people who end up tragically dead.
Christie scale: MEDIUM-HIGH levels of RACISM.
One of Christie's best books, with vivid, memorable characters, an excellent puzzle, and some real emotional heft.
The central characters, apart from Poirot, are introduced before the Nile cruise and some time earlier. Linnet Ridgeway is a beautiful, young, fabulously wealthy socialite who's generous and means well but is also high-handed and blinkered by privilege. Her best friend, Jacqueline, is poor, passionate, and quick-witted. Jacqueline's fiance, Simon, is also poor, not terribly bright or sophisticated, but very handsome. Jacqueline loves him with a consuming, somewhat scary passion.
When we meet them on the Nile Cruise, Linnet is married to Simon and Jacqueline is stalking them. Poirot tries to warn her off this path, to no avail. So when Linnet turns up dead with a bullet in her head, suspicion should point straight to Jacqueline (her enemy) or Simon (who will inherit her money). But at the time that Linnet was murdered, both Simon and Jacqueline were in the presence of multiple others for most of it... and then Jacqueline shot Simon in the leg! After that, he had a broken leg and she was sedated and watched by a nurse. So they (and some of the people who witnessed all this) have unimpeachable alibis. Is there anyone else onboard who might have wanted to kill Linnet?
This trio isn't just a set of Christie's best characters, but great characters in general. They feel very alive. They're joined by a very fun set of other characters, of whom my favorite was Cornelia, who's poor and plain and helping out her rich aunt and is in a Cinderella situation, but loves traveling and is actually having a wonderful time. Others include a young angry Communist, a has-been author of erotic novels, and a soup-slurping German doctor. Everyone has secrets.
As it turns out, it was Jacqueline and Simon all along, in a remarkably clever plan concocted by Jacqueline and executed by Simon, depending mostly on a fake leg shot followed by a real one. Simon was a greedy sociopath who was going to marry Linnet and then murder her regardless so he could get her money, and so Jacqueline came up with her own workable murder plot to stop him from carrying out his own stupid one.
At the end, Jacqueline kills Simon and then herself, to spare them both the trial and execution. For her part, it was like the trope where someone's been bitten by a zombie and is starting to turn, and they have to put themselves down. She was too dangerous to be allowed to go free, but everything had been stacked against her to get her to that place. She loved Simon beyond reason and morality and friendship, and she destroyed herself for him. He wasn't remotely worth it.
The book ends with Linnet's body being brought out, and that's heartbreaking too. She had her flaws but they were very human ones. In the end she died not because of anything she'd done, but because she had something that a sociopath wanted. Everything that made her life seem perfect and enviable was actually a horrible trap. Her wealth got her murdered, her beauty didn't a make a difference, one of her friends was stealing from her and another was plotting her death, and her handsome devoted husband thought of her as object to be used and discarded.
There's a pair of romances that form a counterpoint to the Linnet/Simon/Jacqueline triangle. One, which parallels the Simon/Jacqueline pairing, is Tim, a somewhat weak young man who's committed crimes, matched with Rosalie, a strong-willed and more moral young woman. But that works out better because his crimes are nonviolent and he's willing to give it up, and her love isn't of the "abandon all morals" type.
The other is another love triangle of sorts. Cornelia, the Cinderella girl, is courted by Ferguson, the angry Communist (hilariously, he turns out to be an incognito lord in dirty clothes who really is a Communist) and by Dr. Bessner, the German doctor. She chooses Dr. Bessner, who unlike Ferguson is not rich or handsome or young, but appreciates the hell out of her and will give her a life she'll enjoy, healing the sick and learning all sorts of interesting things. You can tell how happy they'll be together.
Ferguson expresses his bafflement over her choice to Poirot, who tells him that Cornelia is a woman of original mind and he probably hasn't met one before. (Implied: because his social circle is a circle jerk.)
The whole thing is a comedic and happy mirror image of the Jacqueline/Linnet/Simon triangle of beautiful people who end up tragically dead.
Christie scale: MEDIUM-HIGH levels of RACISM.