Reading Murder In Mesopotamia

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a fairy’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

So goes La Belle Dame Sans Merci, an 1819 ballad by John Keats. But when a real-life “beautiful lady without mercy” is terrorized (and murdered) at her husband’s archeological dig, it’s Poirot–and not a knight in shining armor–on the case.

The Story In Murder In Mesopotamia

Nurse Amy Leatheran travels to Iraq to work as personal nurse to Louise Leidner, who seems to be suffering from severe anxiety. Louise’s husband, Eric, is head archeologist on a dig and the Leidners live in a compound with several other members of the archaeology team.

Louise confides in Nurse Amy that she has been receiving threatening letters from an unknown person–possibly someone connected to her former husband, who supposed died shortly after their marriage. She explains that past letters arrived whenever she began a new romantic relationship but stopped when she married Eric. But now the letters have begun again.

Amy is allowed to read the most recent letters and notices the handwriting bears a striking resemblance to Louise’s. She also learns that the letters simply showed up in Louise’s bedroom and were not sent by post.

Unsure what, or whom, to believe, Amy cares for Louise as best she can until Louise is brutally murdered one afternoon. Hercule Poirot, who is traveling in the area, is called in and he and Amy team up to investigate.

My Thoughts On Murder In Mesopotamia

This isn’t the first time Poirot has teamed up with a woman he barely knows to investigate a case but Nurse Amy is the best female “sidekick” he’s had so far. Alas, there is no Japp, Lemon or Hastings here but I wasn’t terribly disappointed. Nurse Amy is a fully formed character who holds her own with our favorite detective.

The setting, too, was a refreshing change. There’s nothing wrong with an old-fashioned English village mystery but placing the story in the desert added another layer of intrigue and, I’m sure, exposed her readers to a world most will never visit themselves.

My audiobook of Murder In Mesopotamia was narrated by Anna Massey. I didn’t quite love her performance as Amy and I don’t think she captured Poirot at all but the recording was a high-quality one.

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