This book takes place on a cruise ship. I read it when I did so I could read (part of) it while I was on a cruise ship. We weren't on the Nile River, but still.
Pretty sure many people know the basic plot. A bunch of people are on a Nile cruise, including two newlyweds on honeymoon. One of them gets murdered and the other one gets shot in the leg, and the murderer would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids that meddling Hercule Poirot.
I watched the 1978 movie version a few years ago (yay Peter Ustinov!), so I was a proud member of the ranks of people who already know the plot by the time I read this. This time around, I was struck by how much I actually liked |the murderer (well one of them)|, Jacqueline de Bellefort.
(Mildly spoilery text from here on out; I'll redact anything too incriminating, but you might be able to pick up on some stuff from the unredacted bits.)
She's a genuinely intelligent and funny person, and she has |the perfect motive for the murder... but she's still broken up about it. Granted, it's possible she's mostly faking, and she actually did conspire to murder, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her in the early pa|rts when there hasn't been any murdering yet|. Poirot also clearly recognizes |she's trending that way|, and |tries to talk her out of it| several times.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for murder and some bad language.
4 stars.
(Endnote: This has nothing to do with Death from Discworld. Although that gives me a crossover idea...)
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