Appointment with Death is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 2 May 1938[1] and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year.

[3] The book features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and reflects Christie's experiences travelling in the Middle East with her husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan.

Mrs Boynton is sadistic and domineering, behaviours which she may have carried over from her original profession of prison warden - or, rather, she became a wardress because she enjoyed having power over people.

Before her death is discovered, Raymond, having fallen in love with Sarah, and Lennox, finally realising he could lose Nadine, separately decide to tell their mother they are leaving.

It was not to Sarah, but to Lady Westholme standing behind her, that Mrs Boynton had addressed that peculiar threat; the temptation to acquire a new subject to torture had been too great for her to resist.

Lady Westholme, eavesdropping on Poirot's summation from an adjoining room, overhears that her crime is about to be revealed to the world and commits suicide with a revolver she carried when travelling.

His examination of the family, the psychologists and the few others in the party, his sifting of truth from half-truth and contradiction, his playing off one suspect against another and gradual elimination of each in turn are in Mrs Christie's most brilliant style.

"[5] In The New York Times Book Review for 11 September 1938, Kay Irvin said, "Even a lesser Agatha Christie story holds its readers' attention with its skillful management of suspense.

Indeed, though we begin our story in Jerusalem and meet our murder in Petra, the Red Rose City, we might as well be in a snowbound vicarage as far as the limitation of suspicion is concerned.

Not this author's best crime novel, Appointment with Death is yet clever enough and convincing enough to stand head and shoulders above the average work of the kind.

"[8] E R Punshon of The Guardian in his review of 27 May 1938 summarised: "For ingenuity of plot and construction, unexpectedness of dénouement, subtlety of characterisation, and picturesqueness of background, Appointment with Death may take rank among the best of Mrs Christie's tales.

The UK serialisation was in twenty-eight parts in the Daily Mail from Wednesday, 19 January to Saturday, 19 February 1938 under the title of A Date with Death.

She charted the creation of Poirot and expressed her feelings about him in the famous quote, "There have been moments when I have felt: 'Why-why-why did I ever invent this detestable, bombastic, tiresome little creature!

The film retained the essential plot of the book, though the location of the murder was changed from Petra to Qumran, an archaeological site in Palestine.

The cast included Lauren Bacall, Carrie Fisher, Sir John Gielgud, Piper Laurie, Hayley Mills, Jenny Seagrove, and David Soul.

The screenplay was written by Guy Andrews and it was filmed in Casablanca (with Mahkama du Pacha acting as Hotel Constantine in the adaptation and Kasbah Boulaouane as the excavation site) and El Jadida, Morocco in May 2008.

Promise of Death) by Fuji Television in Japan, continuing their series of adaptations of Christie stories for the Japanese market.