Death Comes as the End.

CHRISTIE, Agatha.

Item Number: 127625

London: The Crime Club, 1945.

First edition of this classic Christie mystery. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a very good dust jacket.

Death Comes in the End is only one of Christie's novels not to be set in the 20th century, and - unusually for her - also features no European characters. Instead, the novel is set in Thebes in 2000 BC, a setting for which Christie gained an appreciation whilst working with her archaeologist 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 from this standpoint. It is also the first full-length novel combining historical fiction and the whodunit/detective story, a genre which would later come to be called the historical whodunit. “Agatha Christie was the absolute master of misdirection. No matter how logical we think we’re being when we read her, she always manages to send us swimming after her red herrings while ignoring that huge whale in the corner of the tank" (Margaret Maron).