Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18) in Around the World in 80 Books

Jul 30, 2008 Suvi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: _great-britain, crime-mystery, _book-shelf, _africa, novels, 1900-1939

Re-read 01.09.2017 From 3 to 4 stars.

The first book I read from Christie was The Big Four (1927), but starting from that was a huge mistake, because it's vastly different from the usual Poirots. Luckily, Death on the Nile was next in line, and it confirmed once and for all that my time wouldn't be misspent reading Christie, just like it wasn't misspent watching the television adaptations for a long time before I moved on to her books.

The plot of Death on the Nile is the only one I can rememb Re-read 01.09.2017 From 3 to 4 stars.

The first book I read from Christie was The Big Four (1927), but starting from that was a huge mistake, because it's vastly different from the usual Poirots. Luckily, Death on the Nile was next in line, and it confirmed once and for all that my time wouldn't be misspent reading Christie, just like it wasn't misspent watching the television adaptations for a long time before I moved on to her books.

The plot of Death on the Nile is the only one I can remember vividly, in part because the Agatha Christie's Poirot adaptation is one of my favorites, so I've seen it several times. After nine years, the plot seems even more brilliant than the last time (not to mention that I really love how the novel is set in Egypt). It's the ultimate concept of presuming something is true just because it looks like it is, but we all know how one can't trust anything Christie shows us.

When you know the murderer and the role of each passenger, it's also interesting to spot all the details where one can actually get an idea who the culprit is. As always, though, the details might not be hidden between the lines, but they're definitely obfuscated enough so that it becomes extremely hard to see the true meaning of certain scenes or words.

Sidenote: I've recently decided to start collecting certain books from certain publishers (like Hodder's Stephen King paperbacks and classics in Everyman's Library editions), because I feel like my money is better spent on carefully selected books than impulse purchases, and Death on the Nile has the honor of being the first of HarperCollins's Agatha Christie facsimile editions on my shelf. Very pretty, I have to say, and I'll be posting about it on Instagram later today.

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10/09/2008 I should have known I like Christie because her stories are just simply wonderful old-fashioned crime puzzles that make you turn the pages and sigh when everything's finished. There's not much action or focusing to the crime solver's personal life which is fantastic and in a lot of ways works better than the plots of formulaic contemporary crime novels. Also, the time in which the murders are set is part of the appeal to me. For a long time I've adored the tv movies because you could actually see the lovely costumes and the stories came to life. Now I'm really pleased to have finally decided to read the original books.

You might also want to try one of my favourite games, the Orient Express board game if you want to train your "grey brain cells" like Poirot. ...more

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Mar 15, 2020 Astrid Lim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, series, thriller-mystery, classic, travel, agatha-christie, whodunit, popsugar-2020, readchristie2022

REREADING this for Read Christie 2022.
Still amazed on how dramatic this book is, with perfect amount of love affairs, jealousy, scandal, and welathy people in an exotic cruise.
I haven't watched the movie, I heard mixed reviews, but I'm still interested in seeing it :)

Rereading this after several years.. It's so much better than what I remembered. Since I already know the ending and twists, my focus was more on finding clues, hints, and loopholes along the book. And it's very clever indeed!

I lov ...more

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Sep 10, 2011 mstan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: src-fall-2011, rereads, mystery, british, kindle

Re-reading Christie more than fifteen years after I devoured the last Christie mystery I could lay my hands on is a strange experience. I can see now that Christie was not a particularly great writer and Poirot is quite self-aggrandising indeed, but there is still something compelling about some of her narratives.

Blessed with a very short memory indeed, I don't remember who 'did it' in this book, but do have a positive 'glowy' feeling about it. I was quite pleased to be rapidly sucked into the w ...more

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