July 2025 Fanfic Recs

I'm still on my Agatha Christie kick. This month it was Murder in Mesopotamia, which is set on an archaeological dig in Iraq. I'm pretty sure it's one I never read before, nor have I seen the David Suchet episode. Christie was interested in archaeology and participated in digs, so it had some interesting details about the work and day-to-day life of archaeologists in that era. It featured a different narrator than most Poirot books: a woman hired as nurse to the eventual victim about a week before her death. The nurse was both opinionated and unreliable, which was a fun combo in some regards since you could see how her prejudices for or against certain characters were affecting her judgement and blinding her to some of the realities of the case, but unpleasant when her opinions involved racism against the local Arab workers at the dig, which they frequently did.

As for the mystery itself, perhaps the easiest explanation of my feelings is that I enjoyed the setup, but not the solution. One hopes for a satisfying answer to all three of the questions of Who, Why, and How, and the ending was so improbable on one of those counts that it destroyed my suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the classic Christie twists and turns and it's a light, fast read, so I wouldn't describe it as wasted time.

And here are some of the fics I enjoyed in July!( MDZS, Beyond Evil, K-pop RPF )