We took a long car trip back in July. It was our bi-annual trip to St. Jude for my daughter’s scans and appointments. She underwent treatment for a malignant brain tumor almost four years ago. We are on a schedule of going to St. Jude every six months to make sure she is still cancer free and see how she is dealing with the side effects of treatment.

Sometimes she and I fly out for the appointments, but usually in the summer, we opt to drive so other family members can go with us. This time, we decided to bring the whole family and make a trip out of it. We started with a visit to my brother’s farm in North Georgia where we got to celebrate my mom’s birthday and spend time with cousins. This was a four hour drive from our house. When we left the farm, we had a six hour trip to St. Jude in Memphis.

Everyone prepares for car trips in our family by loading up their tablets with games, books, videos, etc. I am typically the designated driver because it is the only way I can avoid car sickness. I generally do not like audio books because I have ADD and cannot always focus long enough to keep up with the story. However, listening to audio books while I am driving is a whole different story… get it… story ??? *crickets*

I loaded my phone with a couple of books I downloaded via Hoopla. Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie was one of them.

The tranquility of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, and beautiful; a girl who had everything- until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: “I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.” Yet in this exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems…

Book Description

This is my second Agatha Christie book and certainly will not be my last. Christie’s books are timeless. Set in 1937 when Cairo is still considered a jewel of a city. This mystery features a young heiress, multiple motives for murder, and criminals traveling under assumed names.

The famous detective, Hercule Poirot happens to be enjoying a holiday on a cruise on the Nile. His companion, Colonel Race, is also on the cruise because of a tip that a seriel killer is also vacationing there under an assumed name. All is going smoothly until one night when Linnet Ridgeway is murdered in her cruise cabin. Colonel Race entrusts Poirot in bringing the murderers to justice.

As with Murder on the Orient Express, it seems everyone we meet in the story has a motive. We have a ridiculously rich young American girl with her newly aquired husband, her friends, and her business advisors as well as a British mother and son, an aging spinster with her nurse and neice, and many more characters including the famous Hercule Poirot. Filled with plot twists and plenty of red herrings, this story proves to be a puzzle until the end. Once the end comes and the killer is revealed, you realized that the clues were there all along and feel a little upset that you didn’t figure it out first!

I enjoyed listening to this book and trying to solve the crime alongside Poirot. Death on the Nile is a quicker read (or listen) than Murder on the Orient Express. It has all the ingredients to make a fantastic story. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, upper middle school and older.

There are a few outdated terms that, by today’s standards, would be considered racist or offensive. But you have to remember that this book was written in the 1930s. These terms are not distracting in any way to the plot. The descriptions of murder are also not the focus. There is no gore or over the top depictions. Murder is not idealized. The focus is on solving the puzzle.

First published in November 1937.

And! The language is clean, which is a huge win in my book!