A review by el_duderino_already_the_10th
Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie

3.0

SpoilerI was hooked for the entirety of the book but God, the ending is dumb. I loved the setting. I like how Christie puts suspicion on every person. The woman has an art of writing beautiful red herrings. That much is granted but both her books I have read so far have incredulous endings but this one is much more ridiculous than Styles. The murder in Styles was brilliant; it was how the murderer was caught, which was ridiculous.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that yeah, somehow, I buy that a woman, supposedly a very smart one, marries the same person twice without realising it. But the method of murder?? What the fuck!! It was so dumb, it worked due to pure luck. There were so many ways it could have failed. In real life, it WOULD HAVE failed. I'm 100% certain about that.

1. What if the woman jerks her head backwards as a reflex action? The stone came from the roof. There's only one person on the roof. Caught red-handed.
2. What if the stone does land but she screams? Leatheran and Johnson rush to the room. The window is open and her corpse is lying in front of it. They don't see anyone leaving the room. So, it would be clear that she was attacked from the window which would make Leidner a prime suspect.
3. Even if she hadn't screamed but someone happened to visit her in the course of that hour, the possibility of the attack coming from the window would have been very strong.
4. Even if no one entered the room in that hour but what if she had bled profusely and all the area nearby the window was bloodstained? How would Leidner have cleared that up?

There are other loose ends as well, which I don't wanna get into. I enjoyed reading most of it but I feel cheated by the ending.