Murder in Mesopotamia

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie

A. I love how much bigger Christie's name is than the title;
B. My cover is just like this except red but I couldn't find a picture of that online.

Summary: Nurse Leatheran is hired to watch over nervous Mrs Leidner, wife of archaeologist Dr Leidner. While she originally seems like a nervous Nellie, her fears are proven true when she is found murdered. Can the famous Hercule Poirot catch the killer?

Well I don't really like Poirot but he's not as annoying as in other books (I think he's exceptionally cruel to Hastings) and Nurse Leatheran doesn't really like him (or his stupid egg shaped head) either although this is based on British xenophobia (a common theme in Christie books). There is also a wide variety of personalities in the camp and the interaction of them is one of the pleasures of the book. I also liked the victim so I was sad to see her dead.

I did not figure out the murderer-honestly I think I should just give up trying. I think I've read eight mysteries in the past month and I haven't solved any of them (although I did watch an episode of Castle recently that I was able to solve-I'm usually pretty bad at solving TV and movie mysteries too). Luckily I've never aspired to be a detective or anything but this just seems to be further proof that I fail. There is also something that needs to be believed in order to make the murderer credible; reading other reviews, some people didn't but I was able to square it in my mind.

Overall: 4/5 especially for the narrator-I think I liked her more than Hastings and she was certainly treated better than Hastings by Poirot.

Challenge Update: 6/81