Review: Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
I read this book because my parents wanted to see the movie with me! Before this, I had read And Then There Were None and The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
This book is a murder mystery that mostly takes place on a boat on the Nile river. The setup is a significant part of the story; we are about halfway through with the book before a murder occurs.
I do really like the red herrings in this book. I was able to identify two red herrings as red herrings, but I was certainly taken in by another of them. Well, I was half right about it, but I fully expected a different person to have been the murderer for too long. What threw me off the actual killer was a lie they told, I thought it was annoying and maybe bad old times writing, but it turns out it was a character lying which made much more sense in retrospect.
Multiple characters in this book are outwardly racist to the local people; this is not pushed back upon at all. Which isn't a surprise, but I still wanted to make note of it.
I didn't enjoy the pacing; I found it a tad inconsistent but mostly very slow. This, combined with the cast being pretty huge, made the early middle a tad confusing. I was able to get really into it in the last hundred pages, but I think that was in part because I was finally able to accept that I only really needed to remember who six people were for the book to be engaging.
I thought the reveal was excellent, but I don't understand exactly why the killer confessed. And I didn't like the very last big thing that happened.
I own one more Christie I haven't read; I'll certainly get to reading it. It is Murder on the Orient Express, but I have a theory that maybe I need to read her books that are not helmed by a detective. Maybe I'm not that into detective books?
I gave this book three stars.
