With the news that the BBC will be revisiting the character of Hercule Poirot – this time as a dashing young detective, played by Edward Bluemel – traditionalists will be gravitating, once again, towards Agatha Christie’s celebrated novels. Her books are beloved around the world: she is the most translated author in history, and her works are outsold by only Shakespeare and the Bible.
And, above all, it is her famous Belgian detective, with his prim moustache and egg-shaped head, who has made her a global icon. Here, then, for those (like me) who fear that the urge to modernise will strip Poirot of his charm, is the definitive list of the best Poirot novels – ranked. These are the books with the most beautiful settings, most compelling characters, and solutions that make you yelp “aha!” (a good baseline for a mystery’s success) or gawp in shock.
11. Death on the Nile
‘Death on the Nile’ brings us the murder of an heiress set against the backdrop of one of the world’s most famous rivers
The Nile proves to be perhaps Christie’s most evocative setting. The steamer Karnak cruises down the river, burdened with a cast of refined colonialists. But the murder of a wealthy heiress throws the trip into disarray. Someone on the ship must be responsible. Christie’s foreign books always have a distinctive pleasure, and interwar Egypt is one of her most successful depictions of foreign climes. From Aswan to Wadi Halfa, the gentle trundle of the Karnak matches Poirot’s unriddling of alibis and motives. It would be an elite novel (and is considered so by many, I will concede) were it not for a daft final murder and a solution that is far too complicated to be truly satisfying.
