Murder in Mesopotamia

I read this book when I was just a boy, barely old enough to speak the word "Mesopotamia." In retrospect, I wonder why American publishers carried over Christie's British title unchanged, when they seemed to have so little faith in us so often that every other title was changed in some way--"Death in the Clouds" became "Death in the Air," etc. The general idea must have been that we were dummies, and yet they let "Mesopotamia" slide in unchecked. The book is a beautiful story about an enigmatic woman, Louise Leidner, definitely one of Christie's finest character studies. Biographers say that Christie based this character on an actual woman she knew in Nineveh and resented, a woman who called herself the queen of the dig and wouldn't give Christie the time of day. In fact this woman didn't like it much when Christie married her own pet toy boy Max Mallowan. She was a married woman all right, but she was used to deference and she was used to every other man in the expedition falling in line as her love slaves. Christie described this real life woman, Katherine Woolley, in her memoirs, and I've always wondered how she managed to write such a scathing, searching roman a clef about Woolley and then, after 1936, when she knew Woolley must have read MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, she coolly accepted her hostess' hospitality one more time when in Iraq. What nerve! But there was always sort of a cruel streak, or at any rate a pragmatic streak, about Christie. She honestly didn't seem to care whose feelings got hurt as long as their life made a good story. Check out the way she totally exposed Gene Tierney's feelings to the world when she wrote THE MIRROR CRACKED FROM SIDE TO SIDE--or the Lindbergh family, for that matter, when she wrote the followup to MESOPOTAMIA the same year in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS. She was a voracious tabloid reader, that seems clear, and it must have dated back to when she herself was in the tabloids every day and night due to her 1926 "amnesia" episode. Anyway Christie here creates not only Louise Leidner, the haunted "Katherine Woolley" figure, but Miss Amy Leatheran, a charming and engaging nurse with working class roots. Did Amy Leatheran come into being as a possible rival to the nurse/detective characters then in place created by Christie's American competitors, Mignon Eberhart and Mary Roberts Rinehart (among others)? Hard to say, but I do wish that Leatheran had featured in more than just this one novel. I would have loved to see more books with her in it and I always think that, with all Christie's many backgrounds, she missed a trick by not having a hospital story (or a theater story, for that matter, but that's another kettle of fish). The truth is that Christie's mind was so profligate she could afford to "throw away" a guaranteed long running series of books and just dispose of their ingredients in a single novel, for she was blessed by a fecund imagination. SPOILERS AHEAD! WARNING, WARNING, WARNING.

This fabulous mystery by Agatha Christie has long been a favorite of mine. It outshines many of her other mysteries due to some wonderful atmosphere and a very likable heroine in Amy Leatheren. Hercule Poirot, though a major force in solving the mystery, plays second fiddle in this most entertaining murder mystery. Murder in Mesopotamia is an adventure set in an exotic land where a murder occurs. The first half of the book almost has the feel of an M.M. Kaye mystery. Though one could not put Christie in the same class with Kaye in regards to romantic description of a time and place, there is certainly atmosphere to spare, and it is only when Hercule Poirot is introduced into the story that we see the classic elements of mystery fiction Agatha Christie invented come to the forefront. Amy Leatheren is a young nurse asked to accompany an archaelogical expedition to the Middle East to look after Louise Leidner, the wife of the man heading the dig. Louise is a beautiful but frightened woman capable of both sweetness and offhand cruelty. What she is frightened of is quite vague but may be connected to tensions on the dig. On the suface it is friendly and familiar, but a dangerous unrest lies just beneath the surface. Amy discovers answers to questions too late to prevent a particularly brutal murder and Christie's famous detective, Hercule Poirot, must solve the baffling puzzle of how the murder occurred. Amy has been asked to put on pen and paper her account of the events which transpired and this is her narrative. Soon she is acting as Poirot's helper and, to her delight and embarrassment, having the time of her life. There are both secret relationships and secret identities, and before too long, another murder. Christie creates a wonderful atmosphere here. From the Tigris Palace Hotel in Baghdad to Tell Yarimjah, and from bazaars where people from various nationalities and backgrounds gather to tea and scones ovelooking the ruins she makes the archaelogical expedition come alive. You really get a sense of people moving about in a passion to discover this Assyrian city like Niveveh close to Hassanieh. You can almost see the beautiful and unusual Louise nearly asking to be murdered yet at the same time oblivious to the true danger that lies in wait. While the solution is wildly intricate and implausible a fun and likable heroine and tons of atmosphere make for a great mystery read. A delightfully old-fashioned mystery fans of the genre will enjoy greatly.

I read this book for the first time yesterday, and it immediately became one of my favorites. It takes place on a dig somewhere outside of Bagdad. It is told my Amy Leatheran, a nurse who is asked to be a companion to one of the people at the site. The tone and manner of this narrator makes for a fun read. I also liked the perceptions of a young, independent woman, as we don't normally see that in Christie's works. We see Hercule Poirot as a more minor character, which is interesting to me.

The people who decry this book as not being as good as some of her others are misplaced in their views. This is definitely another of her masterpieces. Her best Poirot books are those set in this kind of territory (I.e. Murder On the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, Appointment with Death, Murder, and this one.) because the setting really enhances the plot. The way this book is narrated is rather different from some of the other books. Told from the perspective of the nurse who looked after the victim before she died, it is very engaging and the prose brings a very human element to the book, and the feelings and emotions of being caught up in a murder, in which everyone becomes a suspect. It works very well. There are some great characters in this one. Some eccentric, some you grow to love, some you are indifferent to. None that you actively dislike. All intriguing. The way the story unfolds is materful, and the methods for murder are, when finally revealed, ingenius. You would enver think of it in a million years, even thought it really is staring you in the face. Also, this books holds the top place in the "most vile deaths in an Agatha Christie novel" category. Anne Johnson's instrument of demise is, to be blunt, quite horrible. I felt sick at the thought of it. (And the way it was depicted in a recent television adaptation in the UK was quite vile. But powerful, and packs a great punch.)An incredibly strong, yet simple, plot, is what makes this book stand out amongst her others. It has power, and is emotional and intense. The method of murder is quite brilliant. The solution, whilst not packing a great surprise as some of her more unlikely novels do, nonetheless rings true. (It would be incredibly hard to have made the identity of the killer a real surprise...all the characters seemed to be viable suspects, and wouldn't pack a great surprise if it was revealed to be them.)This stands among "Towards Zero" "Murder is Easy" "Appointment With Death" "Death on the Nile" "Death Comes as the end" "And Then there Were None" and "Murder on the Orient Express" as one of her very very best books.

I'm a big fan of Agatha Christie mysteries, and I've read most of the popular ones (Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Nile, Evil Under The Sun, and so on). I've also read many lesser known ones, and some of them, I've found to be quite good (Five Little Pigs, Murder On The Links, Towards Zero.). Others, however, I've found to be not so good (Cards On The Table, Sparkling Cyanide, Third Girl, Dead Man's Folly), so when I saw that A & E was making a movie of "Murder In Mesopotamia", a book I'd noticed many times in book stores, but never had enough interest in to pick up, I decided to go out and buy it before the movie was shown. I was a little worried, as I had no idea what to expect from this novel. I'm very pleased to say I was surprised. The book was great.It's in a very interesting setting, an archaeological expedition near Iraq. The characters are varied and colorful, from the talkative and somewhat annoying Bill Coleman to the deep and mysterious David Emmott, the catty and deceitful Mrs. Mercado to the somewhat manly Miss Johnson. And not to mention the one and only Hercule Poirot!But the real star of the book is Nure Leatheran. She replaces Hastings as Poirot's assistant, as well as the narrator, and you'll soon find yourself feeling like the nurse is a close friend of yours, simply telling you something that happened to her while she was over in Iraq.The victim is Mrs. Leidner, wife of the famous archaeologist. There are many different opinions as to her character: some believe she's a scheming, power-hungry woman. Other think she's wonderful. But one thing everyone agrees upon is that her looks are stunning. But lately, Mrs. Leidner has been scared to death due to a number of annonymous letters threatening to kill her. Few people take it seriously, until she's found bludgeoned to death. Then, the race is on to find a killer! And it's an urgent race indeed, for as Poirot says, "murder is a habit." But can even Hercule Poirot catch a murderer amongst the expedition staff, before the true killer finds a second victim? There's only one way to find out. Pick up Murder in Mesopotamia.