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Death on the Nile

Page history last edited by Jon 11 years, 8 months ago

Christie, Agatha - Death on the Nile (1937)

 

Review by Nick Fuller

5/5

What can one say about perfection itself? Let me begin by stating that this is my favourite detective story of them all – the only one I enjoy as much is Gladys Mitchell’s Come Away, Death (also 1937 – obviously a vintage year, with Allingham, Bailey, Berkeley and Innes all producing some of their best work). Nile has all of Christie’s strengths: a tight problem, a confined setting (a boat going down the Nile), excellent detection on the part of the magnificent little Belgian, plenty of amusing characters and a staggering solution.

 

The wealthy Anglo-American heiress Linnet Doyle, who has stolen her erstwhile best friend Jacqueline de Bellefort’s fiancé Simon, is murdered aboard the SS Karnak, whose passenger list includes, as well as the jealous Jacqueline (who has been following the honeymoon couple wherever they go), several grotesques, nearly all with guilty secrets and motives for murder: an embezzling solicitor, a jewel thief, a possible enemy from the past, a Communist and an agitator travelling incognito. In many ways, this is an ensemble piece in the way The Mystery of the Blue Train, Murder on the Orient Express and Death in the Clouds were not. Although we spend most of the story hovering just behind Poirot’s right ear (although not, of course, in his mind), all the characters from the Doyles to walk-on parts such as James Fanthorp and Ferguson get plenty to do, with many subplots and evolving relationships that are irrelevant to the murder but round out the characters. The book also has three of Christie’s best grande dames: the American kleptomaniac Miss van Schuyler; the English Mrs Allerton; and the alcoholic romantic novelist Salome Otterbourne (brought marvellously to life by Angela Lansbury in a tour de force performance).

 

The problem itself is entirely brilliant and more credible (satisfying?) than Orient Express, The ABC Murders or Ten Little Niggers, brilliant though those were. Poirot is at his very best as he works through the cast list and several obscure clues (two bottles of nail polish and a brilliant one of a velvet stole, which would tell the reader everything if he would only use his "little grey cells") to reach a brilliantly simple solution which should be obvious but isn’t. The alibi used here has all the simplicity of Chesterton at his best, achieving the maximum of misdirection with the minimum of effort rather than the elaborate mummery of Crofts, and will go down in the history of the genre as the very best alibi of them all. The two subsequent murders are not only memorable and inevitable in themselves, but also very clever clues to the murderer, each one spelling out (if properly read) the name of the guilty party.

 

This is the best detective story of them all. As Cole Porter wrote in his hymn to the genre: "You’re the top! You’re the Nile!"

 

See also: http://onlydetect.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/agatha-christie-death-on-the-nile-1937

and http://moonlight-detective.blogspot.nl/2012/07/until-death-tore-them-apart.html

 

 

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