Murder in Mesopotamia
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Author | Agatha Christie |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Series | Hercule Poirot |
Genre(s) | Crime novel |
Publisher | Harper Collins |
Released | 1936 |
Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
ISBN | NA |
Preceded by | The A.B.C. Murders |
Followed by | Cards on the Table |
Murder in Mesopotamia (published in 1936) is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie visited the Royal Cemetery at Ur with British archaeologists. The novel takes place at an excavation in Iraq. It features Hercule Poirot.
[edit] Plot summary
Amy Leatheran, a young nurse and the narrator of the novel, is employed by the archaeologist Dr. Leidner to look after his wife, Louise, who is apparently terrified of something or someone and who may be suffering from delusions. Mrs. Leidner tells Amy that she has been receiving threatening letters, perhaps written by her former husband who supposedly died in a train crash but written in a handwriting suspiciously similar to her own. When Mrs. Leidner is murdered, however, it appears that either the dead husband or his younger brother must have made good on these threats. To make matters worse, the crime appears to have been committed by one of those within the archaeological compound. Has the husband/brother been amongst them all along?
Hercule Poirot - by lucky coincidence travelling in the region - is called in to solve the crime.
[edit] Trivia
Although this novel was published in 1936, the events described took place three years earlier. It is when he returns from Mesopotamia that Poirot travels on the Orient Express and solves the murder that takes place aboard it.
Amy Leatheran is only the third first-person narrator to write up one of Poirot's investigations, after Dr. Sheppard (in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) and Hastings.