Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Der Tod auf dem Nil

Woof, I forgot how racist, classist,, and misogynistic Agatha Christie's writing is. I understand part of it being the time it was written in but I won't be reading any of her other works again.

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veganecurrywurst's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Death on the Nile is an Agatha Christie classic.
I much more prefere the Miss Marpel novels, however. Hercule Poirot is intendet to come across as arrogant, but in some cases it's simply annoying.
Contrary to other Agatha Christie books I almost immediatly knew, who the murderer was.

although, I so very much hoped that Jackie would somehow be innocent

I liked that all charaters had their faults and you really could not agree with any of them. As a reader you never really knew who's side to be on.
Also this story had to many characters and some of them didn't feel necessary to the plot at all.
Worst of all is the constant racism expressed by some of the characters, which really ruins some chapters and the reading experience. Hopefully newer editions edit it out, as it is in no way important the the storyline and only ruins the book.
I was looking forward to seeing the new movie, until I saw that Armie Hammer was going to be in it, so now I'll watch the older film version, which also looks amazing.

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alyssagongora's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This book felt like it had a really slow start but once it picked up it PICKED UP! I really had no idea who the murderer was until the very end but it wasn’t the kind of murder mystery where the concept is so far fetched it’s impossible to guess it was the perfect amount of plot twist that doesn’t make you angry. I think my least favorite part was the beginning and how slow it started, if I didn’t know it was a murder mystery I would have DNFed it but knowing that a murder had to be on it’s was kept me going.

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lakea's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

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tomaxhull's review against another edition

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Perhaps my fault for reading Orient Express first... but this was largely a disappointment after that!

Pros: It carried its themes of class, money, and love pretty well. The clues were largely well-dropped, enough for me to pick up on inconsistencies/hints and vaguely link them in my head so that Poirot could satisfyingly lay the full explanations out for me. Many of the central characters - especially the trio of Linnet, Simon, and Jacqueline - felt flawed, interesting, and real; hard to pull off in a tightly-paced mystery. And of course as in any Christie story, it was a very clever mystery.

Where it went wrong for me: Firstly, the Orientalist racism of the book's setting has not aged at all well, and it was really uncomfortable to read caricatures of Egyptian people who were not treated as actual characters at all.

Secondly, while I liked some of the B-plots, such as that of the Allertons, the Otterbournes, and Cornelia, others were fairly unsatisfactory: Pennington being

a crook but not a murderer

and Risetti being

a different, unrelated murderer

were rather disappointing red herrings as they really contributed nothing to the mystery and were basically disregarded after these things were worked out. Additionally, the whole thing with Ferguson the noble-born communist was just an off-note. Maybe it was meant to be comic relief but it was just scene after scene of a highly unpleasant man saying unrealistically unpleasant things, with no deeper thoughts ever revealed behind it, and no relevance to the plot; it really just felt like a political caricature!

My main disappointment, though, was the reveal of the real murder plot:

The killers actually being the two people with the most obvious motive from the beginning COULD be done well, but I think I felt short-changed because it felt as if we'd already seen several sides of Jacqueline. Her going from carefree friend to seemingly unhinged stalker, to then the very tender conversation she has with Poirot, where she seems an understandably miserable and desperate person, was really compelling. It felt sweet, in the midst of a murder mystery, to give time for a storyline of character growth, about the realisation that terrible things happen but there's no sense in continuing the suffering for others.

...And then it turned out that nope, she WAS calculating and ruthless to a terrifying degree? That's what felt a letdown to me... it seemed the narrative had made an effort to get us to sympathise with someone whose actions at times seemed very unsympathetic, and then it said "Actually she IS a totally unfeeling killer"?

Plus just... Okay. the fact the entire thing hinged on Simon being able to sprint like hell across a boat while he's supposed to be grievously wounded, even though he could be spotted (and was), to swiftly murder his wife, and then run back and actually shoot himself in the leg before anyone comes back? A wound that could become pretty serious because you're several days away from a hospital? That's. Like. If you were going to pre-plan a murder THIS elaborately then SURELY you'd make a sturdier plan than this? Very weird contrivance. And if they're this nonchalant about shooting people who get in the way then I feel like they'd just shoot Poirot lol. He at least still proves much more likeable than Sherlock Holmes though.

...Still, it's 2:30 AM and I stayed up to see how it ended, so that at least tells you it got its hooks into me!

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unknown_reader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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nila's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Another great "locked-room" whodunnit murder mystery from Christie. A bit slow in terms of getting to the actual murder, there's a lot of exposition before you get to the actual murder mystery... I enjoyed the colorful characters, though I do sometimes struggle to keep them all separate and remember who's who, but that might be a personal challenge. Poirot delivers as the over-the-top Belgian know-it-all who is the only one who can solve the murder, and the book is genuinely quite funny at times.

For negatives, it is very clear that the books were written during a different time, the way indiginous people are referred to, are absolutely problematic, and I personally found it took me completely out of the story.

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