The narrator of
Murder in Mesopotamia is Nurse Amy Leatherman who has traveled to Mesopotamia to accompany a patient, planning to travel home after she's no longer needed. However, she's asked to assist with the wife of an archaeologist who is excavating a site nearby. The new patient, Louise Leidner, has reported a series of unnerving incidents that have been uncorroborated, leading some of the others in the archaeological team to doubt her truthfulness or mental health. When she turns up murdered, the authorities ask for help from Hercule Poirot who has been traveling nearby, and he works with Nurse Leatherman to find the guilty party. This was a fun mystery narrated by an amusing and perceptive character (her asides about Poirot himself are especially funny).
One thing I noticed in this book, consistent with the previous few Christie books, is the lack of antisemitism, which I had noticed in a number of the early books. One or two had also used slurs against Native Americans, e.g., referring to violent gang members in France as Apache killers. In this book I only noticed one such slur, and it was against Italians. I wonder if given the political climate of Europe in the mid-30s that she found herself unable to have her characters express bigotry against Jews, but found it socially permissible to show bigotry against Italians?
One other funny thing: I don't remember a plane in the book at all; I believe trains and cars were primarily used to get around. So why does the cover have a plane on it?
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