The brilliant podcast All About Agatha gave this novel a very low rating, and I don’t quite understand why. She is soon found dead at the bottom of a cliff, and the priest’s daughter suspects foul play. The trouble starts in this Ancient Egyptian mystery when a priest moves his mistress into the family home. Also, this book contains one of the best portrayals of the relationship between Poirot and Hastings, whose affection for one another is tangible throughout. And although it is much maligned for its melodrama and implausibility, it is nevertheless hugely entertaining and full of joie de vivre. This novel, in which Poirot and his best friend Captain Hastings become embroiled in international intrigue as they race to stop four super-baddies in their quest for world domination, doesn’t sound like standard Christie and it isn’t. However, I have a theory: if everyone would read (or reread) the entire Christie oeuvre and give each novel a fair chance, irrespective of its fame and reputation, I suspect that they would discover, as I did, some unfairly neglected and underrated gems. I n 2013, when I was first asked by Agatha Christie’s family to write a new Hercule Poirot mystery (I have since written three more), I decided I needed to set myself the incredibly enjoyable homework of rereading all her books – not only the famous titles that are talked about all the time, but also the ones that don’t get mentioned so often, some of which are wonderfully enjoyable and memorable, and deserve more attention.Įveryone already knows that Christie is the unsurpassable godmother of crime fiction, whose twists have not been bettered in 100 years, and whose plotting acumen is legendary, and most of us are familiar with the Christie novels that make all the best-of lists: Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None are usually the frontrunners, with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death on the Nile following close behind.Īll of these novels are brilliant, of course, and sales figures show that they are undeniably Christie’s most popular books.

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