Death Comes as the End is a historical mystery novel by Agatha Christie, first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in October 1944[1] and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in March of the following year.

The novel is based on real letters translated by Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn, from the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period, written by a man called Heqanakhte to his family, complaining about their behaviour and treatment of his concubine.

The quiet lives of an Egyptian family are disturbed when the father, Imhotep, returns from the north with his new concubine, Nofret, who begins to sow discontent amongst them.

The novel is primarily written from the perspective of Renisenb, a young widow reacquainting herself with her family when her father Imhotep, a successful but pompous and short-sighted mortuary priest, brings a new "wife", Nofret, into their lives.

Hori and Esa, the elderly mother of Imhotep (a clever woman who although almost completely blind sees things clearer than most others – especially her son) begin to investigate the possibility of a human murderer.

On the same cliff path where Nofret and Satipy died, Renisenb, apparently summoned by Hori, hears footsteps behind her and turns to see Yahmose.

He had consumed a non-lethal dose of poison and pretended to recuperate while committing murders, both to make himself chief heir and to indulge his newfound love of violence.

Maurice Willson Disher said in The Times Literary Supplement of 28 April 1945 that, "When a specialist acquires unerring skill there is a temptation to find tasks that are exceptionally difficult.

But while the author's skill can cause a stir over the death of an old woman some thousands of years ago, that length of time lessens curiosity concerning why or how she (and others) died.

"[7] Maurice Richardson, a self-proclaimed admirer of Christie, wrote in the 8 April 1945 issue of The Observer, "One of the best weeks of the war for crime fiction.

And it really is startlingly new, with its ancient Egyptian setting in the country household of a mortuary priest who overstrains his already tense family by bringing home an ultra-tough live in concubine from Memphis.

Done with tact, yet the result is somehow skeletal – one realises how much the average Christie depends on trappings: clothes, furniture, the paraphernalia of bourgeois living.