Agatha Christie. Murder in Mesopotamia (1935)

     Agatha Christie. Murder in Mesopotamia (1935) Another tale of domestic murder, this time the husband is the perp. Told by Nurse Leatheran, hired by the husband to look after his wife, who appears to suffer from nervous fancies, this is one of three or four stories set in or around archeological digs. The nurse is a good story teller, despite her modest assessment of her abilities. Poirot’s detection proceeds in a workmanlike manner, but the denouement is unsatisfying: It assumes that a wife would not recognise her supposedly dead husband twenty years later, when he woos and wins her for a second time. Christie makes much of her self-absorption, but I don’t believe that it’s sufficient to account for this plot point. ** (2010)