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"'There is an evil that comes from outside, that attacks so that all the world can see, but there is another kind of rottenness that breeds from within—that shows no outward sign. It grows slowly, day by day, till at last the whole fruit is rotten—eaten by disease.'" -Hori, Death Comes as the End, p. 9
The Sum of It:
Our first book of the week is unique among Agatha Christie's works: Death Comes as the End. This story is set it ancient Egypt, which, given what we know about Agatha's archeological background, is not too surprising. HOWEVER, it is evident that she had to put in some extra work into researching and writing this story, but more about that later!
Death Comes as the End opens with recently-widowed Renisenb returning to the home of her father to live now that her husband has passed away. She has lived away from home for eight years, and yet it seems like nothing has changed. Her widower father, Imhotep, owns a lot of farmland, but spends most of the time away at the family's other estates, her brothers, Yahmose, Sobek, and Ipy mope, sleep, and lounge around (respectively), her two sisters-in-law Satipy and Kait have issues of their own (Satipy spends most of her time nagging her husband, and Kait is obsessed with her kids), Grandma Esa is old, but sharp, and the household's most-prevalent servant, Henet, is a super shady gossip. Renisenb spends most of her time thinking about her dead husband and talking to the family's scribe, Hori, who seems like nice older (but not too old) guy who is obviously crushing on her super hard.
The book seems like a fairly decent Egyptian history lesson until things get interesting and Papa Imhotep sends his family a quick papyrus to let them know he is COMING HOME! Oh what great news, says one and all! The boys can get on his case about letting them have more responsibilities, and their wives are happy to see their husbands maybe getting an edge on the inevitable inheritance Imhotep will leave one day. HOWEVER, drama heats up real quick when Imhotep shows up with a very young concubine, Nofret, who is a master at manipulation, stirring up trouble, and generally being kind of creepy. The family is NOT INTO THIS NEW ARRANGEMENT AT ALL. Imhotep decides whatever Nofret says is a go, including basically putting her in charge of his whole estate and money. So it's no surprise whatsoever that Meddling Nofret turns up #MURDERED one day at the bottom of a cliff. The family is shaken up, but for the most part, pretty thrilled she is dead. But things get way more ominous when more family members start dying in various ghastly ways and clues turn up that Nofret's ghost is responsible! Or perhaps Nofret was somehow never dead at all!?!
The YOA Treatment:
I will begin my observations about Death Comes as the End with a quote from English crime writer Robert Barnard about this book because his thoughts do mirror some of mine:
"Hercule Poirot's Christmas, transported to Egypt, ca 2000 B.C. Done with tact, yet the result is somehow skeletal — one realizes how much the average Christie depends on trappings: clothes, furniture, the paraphernalia of bourgeois living. The culprit in this one is revealed less by detection than by a process of elimination."
I will admit, Barnard has a point here. Although Death Comes as the End is intriguing due to its unique setting, it does lack the certain vividness of her books we all know and love. Renisenb & Family are wealthy, but live a fairly simple life. There is no staying in first class cabins aboard the Orient Express or black tie parties thrown by countesses to be found here. And while I have become accustomed to not really (i.e. ever) being able to sniff out the culprit in Agatha's works, this one was particularly vague on clues and even with the mere handful of suspects left alive at the end, I still didn't have much to go on to solve the crimes myself.
However, all that being said, it is worth noting that this is a particularly special Agatha Christie novel. John Curran writes in his book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks (*which every Agatha fan should read — it is so much fun and you will want to become BFFs with John Curran*): "Long before the current vogue for mysteries set in the past, Agatha Christie was a pioneer. Death Comes as the End, written in 1943, was an experiment created at the instigation of Stephen Glanville, professor of Egyptology and a friend of Max Mallowan [#teammax]. He provided her with much of the basic information and gave her books to study in order to get details correct." Her research certainly shows! While her Death Comes as the End characters lack the posh life of her usual 20th Century European lords and ladies, the background she gives them feels very richly believable.
Overall, I did enjoy this book. I am a fan of historical fiction, so reading one written by the Queen of Crime was great fun for me. And, perhaps even more thrilling than the conclusion of the book itself is the fact that Agatha writes in her Autobiography that Egyptologist pal Glanville urged her to change some aspect of the end of the book, which she did, and later wished she could go back and re-write. Hmmmmm! How intriguing is that!? I'll be honest, I've been having a good long think about this one for the last few days and wish I knew what her original, unpublished version looked like!
Happy reading!
-A.
