Avenging spirits
Avenging Spirits (original title Death Comes as the End ) is the 35th detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the United States in October 1944 with Dodd, Mead and Company and in the United Kingdom in March of the following year with the Collins Crime Club . The German first edition was published in 1947 by Scherz Verlag (Bern) with the translation by Ursula von Wiese , which is still used today .
The novel describes a criminal case in ancient Egypt , 2000 BC. At the time of the pharaohs . The venue is Thebes .
This novel is Christie's only novel that is not set in the 20th century. She got the inspiration for this novel from the English Egyptologist Stephen Glanville, a friend of the family. He also helped Christie correctly describe life in the Egyptian family 4,000 years ago. He also vehemently called for a different ending for the novel. Christie followed suit, but made it clear in her autobiography that she thought the unpublished ending was better.
The novel is known for the high number of victims and can only be compared in Christie's work with And then there was none .
Christie uses the months of the Egyptian calendar for the chapter headings . A procedure that can also be found in other novels, for example in The Unfinished Portrait .
introduction
The quiet life of an Egyptian family turns upside down when the father Imhotep, a widower, returns from the north with his new concubine Nofret. Nefertiti sows dissatisfaction among the residents. And when the first die, there seems to be a curse on the house - or does a murderer live in the house?
action
The novel mainly describes the view of the young widow Renisenb, who returned to her family after the death of her husband. Her father, also widowed, brings with him a young concubine from a trip to the north of Nofret. The family quickly falls out over Nefertiti. When Imhotep is called away, Nofret takes over his role and forces Kameni and Henet to work in the house. Satipy and Kait, the wives of the older sons, try to harass Nefert, but they inform Imhotep, who threatens to throw everyone out of the house when he returns. So almost everyone has a motive to kill Nefertiti and when she is found dead at the foot of a cliff one day , an accident seems unlikely.
When it was finally agreed that Nefertiti would not be murdered, Satipy dies: in complete panic, she threw herself from the same cliff under which Nefertiti was found while she was walking with Yahmose. Was it Nofret's ghost looking over his shoulder? The rumors intensify when Yahmose and Sobek drink poisoned wine. Sobek dies, Yahmose survives. His recovery seems to be hampered by a slow-acting poison . A boy who claims he saw Nefret's ghost poison the wine dies next.
Ipy is now starting to work for a better position with his father. He proudly tells Henet about it. The next morning he is found - drowned in a lake.
Kameni seems to have fallen in love with Renisenb and finally asks her to marry him. Renisenb is undecided who to marry, because Hori is also an option. She has known him since she was a child when he was fixing her toys. Ultimately, she leaves the decision to her father and becomes engaged to Kameni. But now she also realizes that her fiancé's relationship with Nefertiti was much closer and deeper than she had ever suspected and that the bitter hatred of the family could have been caused by jealousy.
Then Renisenb, Hori and Esa begin to consider the possibility that not a ghost but a human murderer could be behind the deeds. The group of suspects is very small. Esa tries to lure the killer from the reserve by claiming to know how Satipy died - she is immediately murdered with poisoned wool fat .
As Renisenb walks down the path to the cliff where Nefertiti died, she hears footsteps behind her. She turns and looks into the eyes of hatred and death - into the eyes of her own brother Yahmose. In the face of her own death, she realizes that Satipy had not seen the ghost of Nofret but into the eyes of her own husband. By preventing his recovery with a mild poison, he had not been suspect in any of the later murders.
Just as she realizes all this, Yahmose is hit by an arrow from Hori's bow and she is saved. Ultimately, she decides to marry Hori.
people
- Imhotep, a priest of the dead
- 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, a female domestic servant
- Hori, the family manager
- Kameni, a scribe from the north
Important English and German language editions
- 1944, USA, Dodd & Mead, October 1944
- 1945, United Kingdom, The Crime Club Collins, March 1945
- 1947, Switzerland, German first edition by Scherz Verlag (Bern)
Film adaptations
This novel is one of the few novels by Christie that has not yet been made into a film. However, a BBC television movie was announced.
Audio books
- 2008 Avenging Spirits (sound carrier): abridged reading. Translated from the English by Tanja Handels. Read by Susanne Schröder. Director: Toni Nirschl Der Hörverlag (Munich)
Web links
- Death Comes as the End on the official Agatha Christie website
Individual evidence
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ Agatha Christie: The Good Old Days, 501
- ↑ BBC - BBC One and Agatha Christie Productions LTD strike deal for seven new Christie dramas over four years - Media Center. In: www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved January 10, 2017 .
- ^ Audiobook (licensed) in the catalog of the German National Library