Death on the Nile - Week 2 - Appeal factors.

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie is a perfect example to annotate based on appeal factors.

Hercule Poirot is taking a trip to Egypt,  and he encounters a young woman named Jaqueline DeBellefort who is madly in love with a man named Simon Doyle.   Fate intervenes and Simon does not marry Jackie, but instead weds Linnet Ridgeway,  Jackie's beautiful, glamorous and very wealthy friend.  Jackie confesses to Poirot that she would like nothing better than to place a pistol against her skull and pull the trigger.   Soon,  on a cruise down the Nile River, Linnet Ridgeway is dead.

Agatha Christie really creates a great main character with Hercule Poirot.   He is quirky and tenacious and always measures the facts before solving the crime.   But I love Agatha Chrities secondary characters the most.  It is important to have characters with hidden motives, or desires that need to be discovered in the course of the mystery. In Death on the Nile, many characters are hiding secrets and each of these layers need to be peeled away to solve the crime.   I am also a big fan of setting,  and Death on the Nile is a perfect example of an exotic locale.  Not only is it set in the 1930's  (it was written in 1937)   but also has the wonderful landscape of Egypt,  and a large cruise vessel traveling down the Nile.   I would not call Agatha Christie fast paced.  There is suspense, naturally, because Poirot is solving a murder.  But it is also a bit cerebral.   Chrisite takes time to interview suspects and lay out clues slowly, so the reader has time to digest the plot, and think about the new information, so that when the case is solved, it will make sense to the reader.   The story line becomes a bit important in a Christie because it does follow a "traditional mystery" format, with a murder, followed by an investigation and a solution.    The tone is slightly serious,  not comical or sweet as you would think of in a cozy.   It is slightly more glamorous because of the setting, and at times can even be a little sinister.   Truly one of her greatest works.