“Linnet Ridgeway!”

From Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

Young Linnet inherited a fortune from her late grandfather and she has lately become the topic of everyone’s gossip, both for her fortune and romance with Lord Windlesham. When Linnet’s best friend, Jacqueline, arrives with both the exciting news that she’s engaged to a man named Simon Doyle and the request that Linnet give Simon a job, Linnet is happy to help her friend. However, when she meets Simon, Linnet falls in love with him and the two are soon engaged. When it’s announced that Linnet and Simon have been married and that they will be honeymooning in Egypt, Linnet’s financial trustee, Mr. Pennington, and Mr. Fanthorp, her lawyer’s nephew, set off to investigate the new marriage up close. Also staying at the same Egyptian hotel as Linnet and Simon is Linnet’s maid Louise, Mrs. Allerton and her son, Tim, social-has-been Mrs. Otterbourne and her moody daughter Rosalie, Jacqueline, and retired homicide detective Hercule Poirot. The vacationing Poirot easily notices the tension between the newlyweds and Jacqueline, but only when Linnet asks him to convince Jacqueline to stop following them does Poirot realize the volatile mess everything has become. Unwilling to stop tormenting the newlyweds, Jacqueline tells Poirot that she has no intention of stopping, regardless of the cost. In an attempt to escape Jacqueline, the Doyles secretly board the boat that Poirot and the other hotel guests have booked to travel on the Nile, but Jacqueline also boards the boat along with German Dr. Bessner, the archeologist Richetti, Miss Van Schuyler, Miss Bowers the nurse, and cousin Cornelia. As their journey progresses, things settle around Linnet and Simon, but only when a dangerous accident happens and Poirot’s old friend Colonel Race arrives searching for a mysterious killer is Poirot pulled in to investigate a series of murders with suspects at every turn.

This classic murder mystery by Agatha Christie is a cunning and surprising ride. Some characters are difficult to keep straight even though the first half is devoted to set up. This mystery is possibly one of Christie’s lesser-known mysteries, but Death on the Nile is a must-read for fans of the genre.