Death in a Desert Land

By: Andrew Wilson

Narrated by: Joan Walker

1928. Agatha Christie leaves England for Baghdad, where two years ago, explorer and writer Gertrude Bell died from a drugs overdose. The authorities believed that Bell had taken her own life, but a letter now unearthed reveals she was afraid someone wanted to kill her. Bell writes that if she were to die, the best place to look for her murderer would be Ur, an archaeological site in Mesopotamia. Looking into Bell's death, Agatha discovers the mission is not without risk. She must use all her skills to try to outwit a killer who hides among the desert sands....

©2019 Andrew Wilson (P)2019 Oakhill Publishing

Oh my, poor Agatha.

Agatha Christie wasn't a Nobel Prize in literature, but compared to Andrew Wilson, she reads like one. Murder in Mesopotamia has a really implausible ending, but compared to Death in a Desert Land it's as credible as a scientific treatise. The characters are a bunch of obnoxious idiots, and this unbearable version of Agatha speaks and behaves like a cross between a cheap psychotherapist and a shopkeeper who has to calm an unreasonable client. The whole thing is really the festival of cliche and, despite the messed-up plot, the culprit is obvious long before the end of the book. I only listened to the end because of the fascination that Agatha Christie, the Woolleys, Mesopotamia and archaeology continue to exercise even in this ridiculous and debased form.
Joan Walker's reading doesn't help: Agatha always talks as if she were sedated, Katharine is shrill and unpleasant beyond what is necessary, Americans and Scots are cheap vaudeville.