Death on the Nile

I am in the minority on this, but Death on the Nile is not one of my favorite Christie mysteries. It's actually my least favorite of all the ones I've read so far. There were a number of things that didn't work well for me.

1) Poirot was especially smart-alecky. I know, I know, the little gray cells are part of his shtick, but at least 3 times he assured his sidekick Colonel Race (I missed Hastings big time too) that he had figured it all out and was just piecing the puzzle together, and that of course Race would know who it was if he just thought about it! Poirot's ego overly seeps through these pages.

2) When I think about Agatha Christie, I think about mysteries that I cannot solve. To me, that's part of what makes her novels so great. All the clues are there, and I am always surprised to learn who the culprit is (or culprits). Unfortunately, I had most of this one figured out solely based on how odd the characters behaved. Their behavior made no sense. I'm not going to spoil anything, like I spoiled the ending of the novel for myself by simply using my “little gray cells”.

3) It was a good deal longer than most of the other Christie mysteries I've read, which is in and of itself not bad; however, there was a lot of filler. I think having so many characters is really confusing. They were interviewed multiple times, and it was too challenging to keep everything straight.