nocto

Linnet Ridgeway is one of the richest women in England and Jacqueline de Bellefort is her penniless friend. Jacqueline is engaged to marry Simon Doyle and wants Linnet to help him out by giving him a job. Cut to Egypt where Linnet and Simon Doyle are honeymooning with Jacqueline skulking around making a misery of herself looking like she wants to exact revenge upon them. Take a boat trip along the Nile, Linnet turns up dead in her cabin and everyone on board the boat has some kind of secret they are covering up and Jacqueline and Simon are the only people with unshakable alibis.

Very much what you might expect of Christie but I didn't think it really had much to recommend it and was sub standard in many ways. The suspects may as well have been marooned in a country house than sailing along the Nile for all it added to the story. I more or less guessed the twist early in the book which isn't usually a problem but here it was just a case of reading on to see what reasons Poirot would give to suspect each member of the cast in turn. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood for it but Christie has done much better than this.

Purchased on 4th August 2002.