Murder in Mesopotamia

Murder in Mesopotamia, by Agatha Christie

I picked this book up this weekend at my favorite used bookstore in Williamsburg. I was looking for some light reading to counterbalance some of the history books I’d gotten, and I’ve not yet gone wrong with Agatha Christie. (Of course, I’ve only read Murder on the Orient Express… But still!)

I swear that I’ve read this one before.

But I can’t for the life of me remember doing it.

Usually, I forget the contents of a book, but remember the fact of reading it. This sometimes leads to awkward conversations with fans of those forgotten books as they try to tell me all about some specific element that I haven’t thought about in years.

So it was very strange to announce, midway through the book, that I knew precisely who did it. And that not that, I knew who was the German spy, and who was the red herring. Merrystar asked me why I thought this, and the best I could say is that he wasn’t on the list of suspects. My answer satisfied no one.

I didn’t know the how, but I was absolutely convinced of the who. I have to assume that I’ve either read it or watched it before, because to believe otherwise means that I simply figured it out. By page 50. So I assume that I’ve read it before and blocked it out.

Isn’t that interesting?