An Agatha Christie novel: Murder in Mesopotamia.
A nice typical Hercule Poirot murder mystery in first person narrative. Slightly difficult to stick with through the first 50 pages due to the long winding style of writing, but fairly clever in her usual style, and entertains well.
Here is a review that I posted on GoodReads.
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Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Agatha Christie is an old love and, I believe that I continue to love her because of the impressionable age I started reading her.
I have since grown up in what holds my attention, but time and again, I sub-consciously reach for her book (sometimes ones I’ve read before) and enjoy it grudgingly, coz it’s an old love. One indulges an old flame even if it has diminished in its glory.
These are times when I grit and sigh through the laborious descriptions of scenes, the characters, the dialog style and more specifically Poirot’s long winding speeches.
The book is in first person narrative from the Nurse, who is hired by one archaeologist to take care of his wife who he believes is delusional and will need some caring. There were one too many characters (in my opinion) and despite a clear characterization of each, it gets slightly cumbersome to keep track of who is who and where at different points of the narrative.
It takes awhile to get into the novel, but the last few chapters steadily run along and it all comes together in a typical surprise element. It’s a clever mystery and if you’ve read enough of her mysteries, you’d have a fair guess or at least narrow down the suspects.
Good book. Rating it 3.5 (only because of my own difficulty in staying focused)
Ya, I wasn’t greatly impressed with this book either though Christie is a huge, huge favourite 🙂
I too felt similarly. I guess this was my first book of hers and I had to literally endure the first half of the book until the investigation picked up speed. Yes, the last few chapters were awesome.
sireesha: it’s admirable you stuck on considering it was your first book. She’s written some really exceptional ones 🙂
A&N: yeah, loyalty is under-rated 🙂
You are write in saying that the Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia is an average book.My personal favorite is ABC of murder and murder of roger ackroyd.