a detective not only perplexes the pleasant and not too intelligent hospital nurse, whose duty it is to tell the story, but, again as usual, the intelligent reader as well. The trouble is that he also perplexes the unprejudiced in a way most unusual to him: I for one cannot understand why he has allowed Agatha Christie to make him party to a crime whose integrity stands or falls by a central situation which, though most ingenious, is next door to impossible. The point at issue, which it would be grossly unfair to specify, between Mrs Christie and the reader is one which would provide a really interesting silly season correspondence." He concluded that "usually Poirot is to be toasted in anything handy, and no heel-taps; this time I drink to him a rather sorrowful glass of Lachryma Christie." The Daily Mirror (9 July 1936) wrote: "Don't start reading this if you've got something to do or want a book just for a quarter of an hour or so. Because you simply won't put it down til you've reached the last sentence." The review finished by saying, "Agatha Christie's grand. In this tale of peculiarly placed murder she's given us another rattling good tale." Robert Barnard remarked that an "Archaeological dig provides unusual setting, expertly and entertainingly presented. Wife-victim surely based on Katherine Woolley, and very well done. Narrated by nurse, a temporary Hastings-substitute—soon she found she could do without such a figure altogether." Barnard was pleased with the main character and that Christie did not use Hastings in the novel, but in summary felt that the novel was "Marred by an ending which goes beyond the improbable to the inconceivable." References or Allusions Christie reportedly based the character of Louise Leidner on Katharine Woolley, the wife of archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley. Christie's husband Max Mallowan had worked on Woolley's excavation at Ur. References to other works Although this novel was published in 1936, the events described are stated to have taken place three years earlier. It is when he returns from Mesopotamia that Poirot travels on the Orient Express and solves the murder that takes place aboard it. In Chapter XII, Dr Leidner recalls hearing a "Mr Van Aldin" speak highly of Poirot. Rufus Van Aldin was a prominent character in Christie's earlier work The Mystery of the Blue Train. In one chapter Nurse Leatheran is said to have