Death on the Nile

I recently finished reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. It is a murder mystery about a wealthy young lady, Linnet, who marries the fiancée of her best friend Jackie. Jackie, however close to Linnet she may be, has a plot of revenge which includes following the newly-wed couple on their honeymoon to Egypt and wounding Simon Doyle (her ex. husband) and possibly killing Linnet. All of this has happened in the first half of the book. The story is very suspenseful and draws the reader in to make them keep reading. I could not stop this book, and every chapter consists of a new twist that is completely unexpected. The main setting for the book, as it looks like now, will be Egypt, hence the title. I think that the setting will be a very important part of the book later on because of what it has done for me already.

Egypt has been a common hint to me about who is involved or connected to Linnet. In the beginning of the book, each new chapter introduced a complicated new character of whom I had no idea of who they were or why they were in the story. After I found out about the honey moon of the Doyles to Egypt, I began to identify the word Egypt as a word that connected characters. This clue helped me become less confused about characters and which person does what in the beginning of the book especially, but all throughout the book as well. Egypt was important not so much to the story in this case, but more of a clue for the reader to figure out which characters would be on the trip to Egypt and the important roles they would play in the mystery.

Egypt is also the main place where Jackie decides to track Linnet and Simon down. She does this because she is angry with Simon because he married Linnet after being engaged with her. The setting becomes important here because Jackie is ruining the honeymoon to Egypt, and is a suspect of Linnet’s murder. She has become a dreaded and feared companion on the trip. The setting is unique from any other place that Linnet and Simon could be for their honey moon because they are on a boat for most of the time which makes the case much more contained, and most likely easier to solve because the murderer must be on the boat. Without Egypt, the story may have been a lot longer than it is. Jackie is cleared from one "coincidental" almost-fatal happening in Egypt. A large rock tumbles down a cliff to just where the Doyles sat but they hurriedly moved just seconds before it crashed to the ground. Literally, a piece of the setting almost killed the endangered couple. This was no coincidence it seemed after all that happened. This is when the suspicion begins, all caused by the setting of Egypt.

This book is probably my favorite book ever. One of the things that make it so interesting is the setting. I learned a lot about settings from this book. I now know that every setting has some importance to the book, otherwise, it would not be that setting. My life would be a lot different if I lived somewhere else, for the better or worse. In this book, the setting helped the story a lot by being on a boat in Egypt most of the time, this way there are limited suspects.