Death Comes as the End

As I have been reading through all of Christie's mysteries, this one came as a bit of a surprise. I appreciate her stand alone pieces (it's refreshing to get away from her most famous detectives when you are reading them all in a row) but this one is different in that it takes place in Ancient Egypt.

It was an adjustment to understand the culture of Egypt thousands of years ago—obviously no detectives, lots of gods and rituals, gender roles, etc. None of it was thoroughly explained so I went along with it with a bunch of question marks in my head. It needed more description: what they were wearing, their hair, what the tomb looked like, the landscape, the house. It was written as if you should know all of that already. Since all I know about Ancient Egypt revolves around mummification and hieroglyphics, I had trouble picturing an authentic setting.

As for the story itself, I enjoyed it. It is difficult to have a murder mystery without a detective and without the methods we now use to determine evidence. But she made it work. The narrator drove me a bit crazy—she had the tendency to call everyone else stupid while being completely oblivious and naive herself. Overall, worth a read but not her best work.