The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything ? until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ?I?d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.? Yet in this exotic setting nothing is ever quite what it seems?