Murder in Mesopotamia (1936) - starring Hercule Poirot - written by Agatha Christie

The Murder in Mesopotamia was a book published in 1936 by Agatha Christie, and was based on an archaeological excavation set in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq), something pretty close to Agatha Christie, since her second husband Sir Max Mallowan was an archaeologist who went for digs in the Middle East, and Christie had also accompanied her husband on some of those digs. At the time at which the novel was set, the state of Iraq was a British protectorate. One interesting point in this novel is that it was released after 'The Murder on the Orient Express', but was set before the actual Orient Express event, since he was returning from Mesopotamia when he came back on the Orient Express. Like many of other novels, this one was also turned into a television movie in 2001, starring David Suchet.
The novel was set on a dig, but did not really have much reference to any findings from the dig, or any treasure hunt, or so on. It was mostly based on a person taking on a different identity, and then finally his original identity being unmasked.



Poirot is in Iraq when a murder happens, and Poirot's friend, Dr. Reilly, who is with the archaeological dig asks him to help by investigating. There is a story behind the murder. The lady who is murdered is called Mrs. Leidner, married to Dr. Leidner, a Swedish-American archaeologist working on the same dig. Mrs. Leidner has a past, since she was married to a person named Frederick Bosner, who was a spy for the Germans while working for the US State Department during the First World war. His betrayal was discovered and he was sentenced to death. He managed to escape, only to finally die during a train crash where his badly mutilated body was found. From time to time, when Mrs. Leidner started getting close to a relationship, she would get threatening letters (supposedly from her dead husband). Given this history, Dr. Leidner had hired a nurse Amy Leatheran to look after his wife on the dig. However, one day they found the wife dead in her room, killed by a blow to the head.
And then soon after, a female associate of Dr. Leidner called Miss Johnson is killed by making her drink acid instead of water, but she manages to say a cryptic 'the window' before she dies; this helps Poirot in the case even though the clue seems very cryptic.