Murder in Mesopotamia: Nurse Leatheran, Poirot and a Death at an Archaeological Dig
When Nurse Amy Leatheran agrees to look after Louise, wife of the American archaeologist Dr Leidner, at a dig near Hassanieh in the Iraqi desert, she finds herself taking on more than nursing duties: she also has to help solve murders. Fortunately for Amy, Hercule Poirot is visiting the site. But will the great detective arrive in time to stop a killer striking again?
Author: Agatha Christie (1890–1976)
Title: Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 288 pages
Series: Hercule Poirot, narrated by Nurse Amy Leatheran
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0008164878 (ASIN 0008164878)
Anonymous Letters
In the expedition house beside the dig, Mrs Leidner shows signs of a growing persecution mania that gives her terrifying hallucinations about her past, and threatening anonymous letters make her fear for her life. Nobody takes her fears very seriously, but her husband, the director of the excavation, hires an experienced nurse to look after her while he is busy.
A Death in the Expedition House
Dr Leidner and his team only understand how serious the matter is when his wife is found dead on her bed with a terrible wound to the head. In this case Poirot faces mysteries that seem beyond even his abilities. Christie leads the reader into a maze of suspicions, signs and clues that push the solution further and further away.
Life on a Dig
Christie knew this world intimately. In 1930 she met her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, at Ur, in southern Iraq, where he was working for Leonard Woolley, and she spent many seasons with him on excavations. The fictional dig at Tell Yarimjah, with its expedition house built around a courtyard, its staff dining together every evening, its pottery sorting and photography, is drawn from those experiences. The tensions of a small group living in isolation for months are rendered with an insider’s accuracy.
Louise Leidner
The victim is one of Christie’s most intriguing women: beautiful, magnetic and difficult, adored by some of the team and resented by others. Christie readers have long noted the resemblance to Katharine Woolley, the wife of the leader of the Ur excavations, whose charm and imperiousness dominated life on that dig. The novel never says so, but the portrait gives the story an unusual psychological sharpness.
Nurse Leatheran’s Account
Instead of Hastings, the narrator is Amy Leatheran, a sensible English nurse who writes the story at the request of the local doctor, apologising now and then for not being a literary person. Her common sense, her prejudices and her healthy scepticism about Poirot, whom she first takes for a hairdresser, make her a refreshing guide. The murder itself is close to a locked-room puzzle: the victim’s room opened only onto the courtyard, which was watched all afternoon.
Screen
The ITV Poirot series adapted the novel in 2001, with David Suchet, filmed in Tunisia. The book’s careful timetable of the fatal afternoon is easier to follow on the page.
Who Will Enjoy It
Readers interested in archaeology and the Middle East between the wars will find the background as rewarding as the puzzle, and those who like a narrator with a distinct voice will enjoy Nurse Leatheran’s brisk, slightly prim account. The solution is one of Christie’s most daring, stretching plausibility for some readers, but it is fairly clued, and the atmosphere of the expedition house, with its suspicion growing day by day, is superbly sustained.
Why Read It
With the invaluable help of Nurse Leatheran, a sharp and down-to-earth narrator, Poirot must apply his particular methods with great care to find the killer at last. Christie knew the world of Middle Eastern digs from the inside, and the setting feels completely authentic.
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