In Agatha Christie’s novel Death on the Nile, Hercule Poirot investigates murders aboard a Nile steamer.
The 1937 novel is set largely on the Karnak, a fictional paddle steamer cruising the Nile in Egypt. Poirot is travelling as a tourist when the honeymoon of wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway and Simon Doyle is disrupted by murder. The confined setting gives the story a classic closed-circle structure: suspects and investigators are all moving together, with limited opportunity for anyone to leave.
The novel is often confused with Christie’s 1926 book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or with the later film adaptations. Death on the Nile was adapted for cinema in 1978, with Peter Ustinov as Poirot, and again in 2022, with Kenneth Branagh in the role. Christie drew on her knowledge of Egypt and Nile travel, a setting that also appears in other works involving the region.