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Appointment with Death

Appointment with Death

ClassicsCrime
Pages
178
Published
1976
Language
English

Synopsis

Among the rose-red cliffs of Petra, a touring family draws the eye of everyone around them. At its centre sits the elderly Mrs Boynton, a former prison wardress who rules her grown stepchildren and daughter with a calculated, suffocating cruelty, keeping them isolated, fearful, and unable to imagine a life beyond her control. Watching the family unravel are a young doctor, Sarah King, and a French psychologist who recognises the matriarch's tyranny for the sadism it is. When the party reaches the ancient city, Mrs Boynton is found dead in her chair, seated apart from the others, an apparent victim of the heat and her own failing heart. Hercule Poirot, travelling in the region, has already overheard a single chilling sentence spoken between two of the Boyntons, and he is certain the death is no accident. Given a narrow window by the local authorities to reach the truth, he sets out to question every member of the party and to reconstruct the exact movements of an afternoon in which almost everyone had reason to wish the old woman gone. The investigation turns on small contradictions of time and testimony, and on the psychology of a household shaped by years of domination. Poirot must separate the relief of the freed from the guilt of the killer, weighing motive against opportunity in a setting as confining as the family itself.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

TenseAtmosphericIntellectualDark
Family SagaRevengeMorally GreyBetrayal

Genres

Classics Crime Mystery Psychological Thriller

About the author

A
Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie (1890-1976) is the best-selling novelist of all time and the writer the world calls the "Queen of Crime." Born Agatha Miller in Torquay, Devon, she came to fiction on a dare: her sister Madge bet she could not write a convincing detective story, and the result, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, introduced the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Her dispensing work in a hospital pharmacy during the First World War, repeated again during the Second, gave her the expert knowledge...

Characters

Hercule PoirotProtagonist

The Belgian sleuth, travelling in the region, who overhears an incriminating remark and is granted a limited window to solve the case through psychology and method.

Mrs BoyntonSupporting

A former prison wardress and tyrannical matriarch whose sadistic control over her family is the dark engine of the story; she is found dead in Petra.

Raymond BoyntonSupporting

One of the dominated stepchildren, drawn to Sarah King and overheard speaking of his mother in a way that haunts the investigation.

Carol BoyntonSupporting

Raymond's close sister, equally cowed by her stepmother's grip on the household.

Lennox BoyntonSupporting

The eldest stepson, married to Nadine, his spirit largely worn down by years under his stepmother's domination.

All characters in Appointment with Death

Frequently asked questions

  • Where and when is Appointment with Death set?

    It is set in the Middle East, moving from Jerusalem to the ancient rock-cut city of Petra in Transjordan. The novel was first published in 1938 and reflects the region as Christie knew it in the 1930s.

  • What is the famous opening line of the novel?

    The book opens with the overheard line, "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Spoken between two of the Boyntons and caught by Poirot, it is widely cited as one of detective fiction's most striking hooks and sets the mystery in motion.

  • How did Christie's own life inspire the Petra setting?

    Christie drew on her extensive travels in the Middle East with her second husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan, whom she regularly accompanied on excavations. Her firsthand experience of the region's sites supplied the vivid backdrop, with Petra at its centre.

  • Did Agatha Christie write a stage version, and how does it differ?

    Yes. Christie adapted the novel into a 1945 stage play of the same title. It is one of her most radical reworkings: she removed Hercule Poirot entirely and changed the identity of the killer from the novel's solution.

  • Is there a film adaptation?

    A 1988 film directed by Michael Winner stars Peter Ustinov as Poirot, alongside Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher and John Gielgud. It followed Evil Under the Sun and marked Ustinov's final portrayal of the detective.

  • Was it adapted for the David Suchet Poirot television series?

    Yes. ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot dramatised it in 2008 with David Suchet as Poirot, directed by Ashley Pearce and written by Guy Andrews. The screen version reworks the setting around an archaeological dig and alters several plot elements from the book.

  • Where does this book fall in the Hercule Poirot series?

    It is the nineteenth Poirot novel, published in 1938. Like most entries in the series, it stands alone and can be read without prior books.

  • Do I need to read the other Poirot novels first?

    No. The mystery is self-contained, so newcomers can start here without missing required context from earlier cases.

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