Around the World in Books / Mesopotamia

Like The Movie ‘Death On The Nile’? Here’s Your Next Book.

Agatha Christie didn’t lose her mojo in novels set in places far from England. ‘Murder in Mesopotamia’ is a good example

David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in ITV’s “Murder in Mesopotamia” (2001) / Credit: ITV

This is the 15th post in the “Around the World in Books” series that is reviewing 30 books from 30 countries in the first 30 days of March. Tomorrow: Mexico

Agatha Christie once cleaned ancient relics with cold cream while accompanying her second husband, an archaeologist, on a dig at Nineveh in Mesopotamia, now in Iraq. The technique, she said, was excellent for “coaxing dirt out of crevices” without harming the artifacts.

Christie made that comment in her autobiography. But she also drew on her travels in Iraq for Murder in Mesopotamia, a Hercule Poirot mystery first published in 1936. A New York Times critic has argued that among Christie novels not set in Europe, this one is only slightly less appealing than Death on the Nile, which appeared a year later.

Murder in Mesopotamia involves the mysterious death of the wife of an archaeologist who is leading a dig at a site a day and a half’s journey from Baghdad. No one has any idea who might have killed the lovely Louise Leidner…