''Death Comes as the End'' is a
historical mystery
The historical mystery or historical whodunit is a subgenre of two literary genres, historical fiction and mystery fiction. These works are set in a time period considered historical from the author's perspective, and the central plot involves t ...
novel by
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...
, first published in the US by
Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990.
History Origins
In 1839, Moses Woodruff Dodd (1813–1899) and John S. Ta ...
in October 1944
[Tribute to Agatha Christie](_blank)
/ref> and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club was an imprint of British book publishers William Collins, Sons and ran from 6 May 1930 to April 1994. Throughout its 64 years the club issued a total of 2,012in "The Hooded Gunman -- An Illustrated History of Collins Crime ...
in March of the following year.[Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. ''Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions''. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)] The US Edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings
The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or ...
and sixpence (7/6).
It is the only one of Christie's novels not to be set in the 20th century, and - unusually for her - also features no European
European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to:
In general
* ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe
** Ethnic groups in Europe
** Demographics of Europe
** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...
characters. Instead, the novel is set in Thebes in 2000 BC, a setting for which Christie gained an appreciation whilst working with her archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
husband, Sir Max Mallowan, in the Middle East. The novel is notable for its very high number of deaths and is comparable to ''And Then There Were None
''And Then There Were None'' is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as ...
'' from this standpoint. It is also the first full-length novel combining historical fiction
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ty ...
and the whodunit
A ''whodunit'' or ''whodunnit'' (a colloquial elision of "Who asdone it?") is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the cl ...
/detective story
Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as specu ...
, a genre which would later come to be called the historical whodunit.
The suggestion to base the story in ancient Egypt came from noted Egyptologist and family friend Stephen Glanville. He also assisted Christie with details of daily household life in Egypt 4000 years ago. In addition he made forceful suggestions to Christie to change the ending of the book. This she did but regretted the fact afterwards, feeling that her (unpublished) ending was better. The novel is based on real letters translated by egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn, from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period, written by a man called Heqanakhte to his family, complaining about their behaviour and treatment of his concubine.[BBC: Voices from Ancient Egypt Gallery](_blank)
/ref>
It is one of only four Christie novels to have not received an adaptation of any kind, the others being '' Destination Unknown'', '' Passenger to Frankfurt'' and ''Postern of Fate
''Postern of Fate'' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie that was first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in October 1973''Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions'' Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie ...
''.
Christie uses a theme for her chapter titles, as she did for many of her novels, in this case the Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
ian agricultural calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...
.
Plot introduction
The quiet lives of an Egyptian family are disturbed when the father, Imhotep, returns from the north with his new concubine
Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive.
Concubi ...
, Nofret, who begins to sow discontent amongst them. Once the deaths begin, fears are aroused of a curse upon the house, but is the killer closer to home?
Plot summary
The novel is primarily written from the perspective of Renisenb, a young widow reacquainting herself with her family when her father Imhotep, a successful but pompous and short-sighted mortuary priest, brings a new "wife", Nofret, into their lives. Nofret soon disrupts and antagonises Imhotep's sons - Yahmose, Sobek and Ipy - as well as their wives. Renisenb realises the housekeeper Henet, while feigning devotion, is full of hatred. She confronts Henet near the end of the story, who in a fit of pique admits she hates Renisenb and hated Renisenb's long-deceased mother.
After Imhotep is called away, Satipy and Kait, the elder sons' wives, try to bully Nofret with tricks, but the plan backfires when Nofret appeals to Imhotep and he threatens to disown his sons and their families upon his return. Suddenly everyone has a motive to kill Nofret and when she is found dead at the foot of a cliff, an accident seems unlikely, although no one will acknowledge anything else.
Next, Satipy falls to her death in terror from the same cliff while walking with Yahmose. Renisenb, and others, wonder if it was Nofret's vengeful spirit
In mythology and folklore, a vengeful ghost or vengeful spirit is said to be the spirit of a dead person who returns from the afterlife to seek revenge for a cruel, unnatural or unjust death. In certain cultures where funeral and burial or crem ...
that she was looking at over Yahmose's shoulder moments before her death. This theory gathers force when Yahmose and Sobek drink poisoned wine. Sobek dies, but Yahmose lingers on, having drunk less of the wine. A slave boy who says he saw Nofret's ghost poisoning the wine dies of poison shortly afterwards.
The handsome scribe Kameni has fallen in love with Renisenb, and eventually asks her to marry him. Unsure whether she loves him or her father's advisor Hori, whom she has known since she was a child, she leaves the choice effectively in her father's hands and becomes engaged to Kameni. She realises, however, that his relationship with Nofret was closer than she had supposed, and that jealousy may have influenced Nofret's bitter hatred towards the family. Hori and Esa, the elderly mother of Imhotep (a clever woman who although almost completely blind sees things clearer than most others - especially her son) begin to investigate the possibility of a human murderer. Ipy, himself a likely suspect, starts to boast about his new, better position with his father; he plots to get rid of housekeeper Henet and tells her so. The next morning, Ipy is found dead in the lake, drowned.
The field of suspects has been further narrowed. Esa attempts to flush out the murderer by dropping a hint about the death of Satipy, but is herself murdered by means of poisoned unguent
An unguent is a soothing preparation spread on wounds, burns, rashes, abrasions or other topical injuries (i.e. damage to the skin). It is similar to an ointment, though typically an unguent is oilier and less viscous. It is usually delivered as ...
, despite the presence of a food taster. Henet - who knows the murderer's identity and is momentarily powerful amid the chaos - is smothered by the linens used to wrap the ever-increasing number of victims.
On the same cliff path where Nofret and Satipy died, Renisenb, apparently summoned by Hori, hears footsteps behind her and turns to see Yahmose. She then sees the look of murderous hatred in her brother's eyes that Satipy saw before she was killed. As Renisenb is about to be killed, however, Hori slays Yahmose with an arrow and saves her. Hori explains to Renisenb that Satipy was not looking in fear at anything ''beyond'' Yahmose — she was looking straight at him. He had consumed a non-lethal dose of poison and pretended to recuperate while committing murders, both to make himself chief heir and to indulge his newfound love of violence. Renisenb's final choice is whom to marry: Kameni, a lively husband not unlike her first, or Hori, an older and more enigmatic figure. She makes her choice and falls into Hori's arms.
Characters in ''Death Comes as the End''
* Imhotep, a mortuary priest
* Nofret, Imhotep's concubine from the north
* Esa, Imhotep's mother
* Yahmose, Imhotep's eldest son
* Satipy, Yahmose's wife
* Ipy, Imhotep's youngest son
* Renisenb, Imhotep's daughter
* Sobek, Imhotep's second son
* Kait, Sobek's wife
* Henet, obsequious family retainer, poor relation of Ashayet, Imhotep's deceased wife
* Hori, the family's scribe
* Kameni, a scribe from the North
* Teti, Renisenb's daughter
* Khay, Renisenb's late husband
Literary significance and reception
Maurice Willson Disher said in ''The Times Literary Supplement
''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication i ...
'' of 28 April 1945 that, "When a specialist acquires unerring skill there is a temptation to find tasks that are exceptionally difficult. The scenes of ''Death Comes as the End'' are laid out in Ancient Egypt. They are painted delicately. The household of the priest, who is depicted not as a sacred personage, but as a humdrum landowner, makes an instant appeal because its members are human. But while the author's skill can cause a stir over the death of an old woman some thousands of years ago, that length of time lessens curiosity concerning why or how she (and others) died."
Maurice Richardson, a self-proclaimed admirer of Christie, wrote in the 8 April 1945 issue of ''The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'', "One of the best weeks of the war for crime fiction. First, of course, the new Agatha Christie; ''Death Comes as the End''. And it really is startlingly new, with its ancient Egyptian setting in the country household of a mortuary priest who overstrains his already tense family by bringing home an ultra-tough live in concubine from Memphis. Result: a series of murders. With her special archaeological equipment, Mrs Christie makes you feel just as much at home on the Nile in 1945 B.C. as if she were bombarding you with false clues in a chintz-covered drawing room in Leamington Spa. But she has not merely changed scenes; her reconstruction is vivid and she works really hard at her characters. My already insensate admiration for her leaps even higher."
In 1990 the novel was included in Crime Writers' Association
The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors’ organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its Dagger awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. T ...
s' The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time
''The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time'' is a list published in book form in 1990 by the British-based Crime Writers' Association. Five years later, the Mystery Writers of America published a similar list titled ''The Top 100 Mystery Novels of Al ...
list.
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard (23 November 1936 – 19 September 2013) was an English crime writer, critic and lecturer. In addition to over 40 books published under his own name, he also published four books under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable.
Life and work ...
: "''Hercule Poirot's Christmas
''Hercule Poirot's Christmas'' is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 19 December 1938 (although the first edition is copyright dated 1939). It retailed at seven ...
'', transported to Egypt, ca 2000 B.C. Done with tact, yet the result is somehow skeletal - one realises how much the average Christie depends on trappings: clothes, furniture, the paraphernalia of bourgeois living. The culprit in this one is revealed less by detection than by a process of elimination."
Publication history
*1944, US, Dodd & Mead, October 1944, hardback (First US edition), 223 pp
*1945, UK, The Crime Club Collins, March 1945, hardback (First UK edition), 160 pp
*1947, Pocket Books
Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.
History
Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing in ...
(New York), Paperback, (Pocket number 465), 179 pp
*1953, Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.[HarperCollins
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...]
), Paperback, 191 pp
*1957, Pan Books
Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany.
Pan Books began as an independent publisher, est ...
, Paperback, 221 pp
*1975, Ulverscroft Large-print
Large-print (also large-type or large-font) refers to the formatting of a book or other text document in which the typeface (or font) are considerably larger than usual to accommodate people who have low vision. Frequently the medium is also increa ...
Edition, Hardcover, 334 pp
Planned Adaptation
A BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
adaptation of the novel was announced in August 2016, as part of a sequence of Christie productions.
was announced as the adaptation's writer in December 2018, with broadcast planned for 2019. However, no further news on the adaptation was subsequently revealed.
at the official Agatha Christie website
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