She helps because she wants to, not because others want her help. The help she offers is motivated by her sense that she knows what’s best for other people, and she often gives help without asking or caring if it’s wanted. But over the course of the novel it becomes clear that her generosity is, in fact, just a mask for a deeper selfishness and sense of superiority. Linnet is smart, beautiful, and worldly, and prides herself on helping others. Linnet then seems to betray her friend Jacqueline by using her wealth, glamour, and beauty to steal Jacqueline’s beloved fiancé Simon. Despite this, however, Linnet’s death is heavily foreshadowed, and her enemies are identified early in the story, beginning with Lord Windlesham (whose proposal to Linnet was refused) and Sir George Wode (whose home Linnet acquired after the latter fell on hard times). Somewhat unusually, her death does not occur until almost midway through the story, allowing Christie to build suspense about how and where the titular death on the Nile will occur. She is also the first and most significant of the murder victims in the novel, killed in her sleep by a gunshot wound to the head and with the letter J written on the wall in her blood. Linnet Doyle (formerly Ridgeway) is the wife of Simon Doyle, the one-time friend of Jacqueline De Bellefort, and one of the wealthiest heiresses in England.

Death on the nile book review