Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie has long been a favourite for me. By the time I was 12, I'd read almost everything she'd ever written. So, after some years of not rereading any of her books, and having lost most of the books by her that I owned (how?? I've no idea where they went!), I decided to try to get copies of those old favourites. One of the first books I bought was Murder in Mesopotamia.

When nurse Amy Leatheran agrees to look after American archaeologist Dr Leidner’s wife Louise at a dig near Hassanieh she finds herself taking on more than just nursing duties – she also has to help solve murders. Fortunately for Amy, Hercule Poirot is visiting the excavation site but will the great detective be in time to prevent a multiple murderer from striking again?

This was vintage Agatha Christie. An excellently plotted mystery + engaging characters means a really good and satisfying book. A B+.

It was interesting to read a book set in Iraq. The feeling was similar to when I was reading MM Kaye's Death in Kashmir, kind of bittersweet. Both places are very changed now from what they used to be when those books were written.

With books told in the first person, liking the character who does the telling is usually basic to enjoying the book. Not here. I wasn't too fond of Nurse Leatheran (I found her sexist, judgemental and unimaginative), but her role was pretty much just that of an observer who told what she saw. This was not her story, so my feelings about her were immaterial to my enjoyment of the book itself.

This was a classic "house party" cozy detective story, even if the "house" was an expedition house in Iraq. No matter. I enjoy this type of story much more than the hard-boiled type of mystery. As I mentioned, I cut my teeth on Agatha Christie (you should read the masterpiece I wrote for school when I was 10... Murder at Manswell Mansion. A Christie novel with a séance, no less ;-) I found it the other day when I was going through my old stuff), so in this case it's a first-as-favourites kind of thing.

The mystery itself was brilliantly plotted, I thought, and very "fair", for lack of a better term. What I mean by this is that there were enough clues that the reader could conceivably solve the mystery herself. I've read more than a few books where a crucial clue is something that only the detective knows, and I hate this! Of course I didn't guess what had happened here, but I like the idea that I had the necessary info so that I could have.