Words on Wednesday: Did Agatha Christie write a Bodice-Ripper?

   In last week's Words on Wednesday, i wrote about the late Christie novel Passenger to Frankfort, and observed from the linked articles that it was similar to the early effort The Man in the Brown Suit.
  So
of course i had to read The Man in the Brown Suit again.  It's one of my favorites anyway.
   But  this time, it struck me more vividly than before - and one of the reasons i've liked it is that it's always seemed especially vivid.  (Maybe that's partly the gorgeous scenery in the 1989 movie, even though it totally changed the story, or at least the geography.)
  Back to my title question:  Did Christie write a bodice-ripper?
  Better.
  No bodices are ripped.  However, while the casual 1920s sexism may give one pause, there is plenty of intense emotion held in check for the wedding night, which may or may not have been unorthodox but was entered into with forever perfectly understood.

 The Man in the Brown Suit at AgathaChristie.com
 A Christie blogger comments on this novel
A Christie contemporary with a style similar to this?  Ethel Dell

 A note on the covers:
  Maybe it's just my mood tonight, but this one seems to have called forth some especially uninspired cover art.  Like the one on my learly '80s Dell edition.  It's not the only cover (search images,  "The Man in the Brown Suit covers") There's several covers, including the original, showing the scene in the tube station where the man falls onto the trtacks.  It's the starting point, quickly left behind.  Some of these covers are better than others, but none particularly representative or good enough to deserve cover status.  The one with the devil mask is somewhat appropriate, but mainly weird.  One with the man and girl on a bridge is possibly more appropriate, but i'd pass it by.  The diamonds and film can definitely figure prominently.  Some of the women may be in perfectly good 1920s styles, but they don't resonate as such to someone like me, moderately familiar with the styles but not part of the time perion.  One book claims to have the original dust jacket, very pretty with an abstract design of colored lines around a male figure, but it doesn't seem to convey anything about the story.
  There are several with variations on the cruise ship theme.  i especially like the current cover (see agathachristie.com link above), with the stylized ship advancing out of the mist/map of Africa.  That seems to sum up the essence of the tale.
  Funny, it seems like half or more of the book takes place on the ship.  Actually, less than one quarter of it is set on shipboard, while more than half of takes place in South Africa and then-Rhodesia.

In sum,
  this is a fun romp, with a love story that remains mainly a travel yarn.