Book review: Murder in Mesopotamia

See wiki. The usual group of suspects is gathered in isolation at a dig in Iraq. I rather liked this, and enjoyed reading it. The denoument is pleasing in that it preserves symmetry: usually inevitably we have to break symmetry as one of a set of carefully balanced candidates is selected.

But it is terribly flawed, I think in ways that we might think of "yes I accept that because it is in a detective book". So Posner is a convicted German spy, but escapes, unlike every other such. He then has the bizarre misfortunte to coincidentally die in a train crash. And then mysteriously becomes sufficiently expert in archaeology, despite a total lack of training, as to become eminent; he (I think this was the idea) acquires the identity of someone else in the crash, and somehow none of the people that ever knew him recognise the change. Meanwhile, his own wifre doesn't recognise him.

Turning now to the murder, it turns out that a heavy stone had been dropped onto her head. This is a desperately unreliable way of killing someone, so much so that it would be a mad plan. But more, if you've stuck your head out of a window, and someone drops a heavy stone on your head, then there will be a wound underneath, where your neck has hit the windowsill; not to mention blood on the windowsill; but in the book there isn't. As to the second murder, I think it implausible that poor J really necked an entire glass in the middle of the night; sipping it is far more plausible; and once again it is a desperately unreliable way of killing anyone.

Meanwhile, the obvious possibility that "someone dropped a rope from the roof and let someone up" is completely ignored.

On the trivia scale: we are given a careful plan of the house, and which room everyone is in. Naturally, it must all be neat and tidy, and it is: there are workrooms, living room and such, and everyone has their own bedroom. Including nurse L. Even though she only arrived a week ago, the house mysteriously grew another room for her.

One more thing: we are told that no-one could possibly have got through the barred windows; and so of course we accept this, as part of the fixed stars of the plot. Then she is killed by a pot dropped on her head as it sticks out of the window through the bars, and technically this isn't cheating, as it is possible to do this even if you couldn't climb through. But nonetheless I think it is not reasonable that people would have been certain that no-one could climb through - what about a small man, or boy - if the gap is large enough to permit a head? And remember these were bars, not a grille.