After reading the Woman on the Orient Express, I decided to re-read Murder in Mesopotamia because I wanted to see how Mrs. Woolley was the inspiration for the character Mrs. Leidner. There were a number of similarities. Murder in Mesopotamia is narrated by Nurse Amy Leatheran. Nurse Leatheran is hired by Dr. Leidner to look after his wife on the archaeological dig. Mrs. Leidner suffers from anxiety and paranoia; she has received several letters from her supposedly-dead first husband. One afternoon, Mrs. Leidner is found dead in her room. Her window was closed, as was her door, Father Lavigny was working in the courtyard of the house, and no one, well no stranger, could have entered the courtyard without being noticed. Suspicion falls to the members of the dig. Poirot happened to be in Baghdad finishing up another case and he and Captain Hastings join the household and solve the murder. I also re-read her short story "The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb".
The other day I finished Agatha Christie's memoirs about her time spent in the far East helping her husband Max on digs. Come, Tell Me How You Live was funny and informative. The title is based on looking at ancient artifacts and wondering how people lived long ago, but also from having friends ask Agatha and Max how they lived during the archaeological digs. Her memoirs cover a couple of digs in Syria; the first dig was in 1930 and the memoir concludes in 1944 (they did stop digging during the Second World War). She describes several towns in Turkey and Armenia was well.
Finally, to round out my foray via Christie into archaeology, in this month's issue of National Geographic, there is a photo taken by Agatha Christie of one of the artifacts her husband Max found on a dig at Nimrud in Northern Iraq sometime between 1949 and 1957 (page 29).
National Geographic article: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/07/explore-adventure-agatha-christie-iraq-artifacts/
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