24th December 2022

I wanted something short to read in the few days left before Christmas so grabbed a random not-yet-read Agatha Christie novel from the shelf, and this was it.

It’s from the 1950s, so there’s some dated language that definitely wouldn’t be used today, particularly what we’d now consider racist and sexist. Although I do wonder a little if it’s already been edited to reduce it.

The plot starts when it’s revealed that the convicted murderer did in fact have an alibi, and the case is reopened. This leads to a lot of talk and a lot of characters - it’s hard sometimes to really understand which of the characters is even doing the investigating.

It definitely feels like one of Christie’s weaker stories - I didn’t feel like the clues were there to help me solve the case, and the ending felt rushed and unsatisfactory.

read more

12th December 2020

This early Agatha Christie mystery was a refreshing return to her writing after I completed my read-through of the Poirot novels some months ago. It’s a slightly complex plot which sees a young woman find herself by chance investigating a crime that leads her on quite an adventure.

There are a lot of the hallmarks of classic Christie, and yet also quite a different feel in places. The pace feels fast, and the setting changes constantly, whereas many of those I’ve read before have been geographically static.

There are lighthearted and even comedic elements, and it seems obvious that the writer is having some fun in putting the characters and story together.

Ultimately it felt something lacking though. Possibly the mystery was too complex, or not quite explained in such a way to make me feel I had reached a satisfying conclusion.

read more

19th May 2019

The final Poirot novel returns us to where his adventures began in the very first novel, and to Captain Hastings, who returns to help bookend the series. Poirot slowly reveals that there is a murderer about, and that he requires Hastings’ agility to investigate and feed him information.

It’s a compelling and classic mystery, with the typical Christie wit and classic unexpected plot twists throughout. The reveals are perhaps more frequent than usual, and it’s as if Christie has been trying to produce a definitive masterpiece for her finale publication.

It makes for sad reading, not only because of the story itself, but also as it is the end of my own adventures with Poirot, who I’ve been accompanying for the last decade. It is however a fitting end, and one that does its job of surprising me well.

read more

15th December 2018

As I approach the end of my decade-long read-through of the Hercule Poirot series, I come to this collection of short stories. The stories are all from early in Poirot’s career, before he was an internationally renowned detective, and were originally published relatively early in Christie’s career, although not collected like this until the end.

It’s a nice dip of the toe into the world of Poirot, but generally I found it frustrating that each of the stories was so short - they don’t contain the depth that I’ve come to expect from the mystery, and there’s not really any opportunity to work it out for yourself as a reader, given the very limited page count.

The beauty of Christie’s writing, to me, is in her ability to feed me clues at just the right pace that I can work it out at the perfect speed along with the narrative - and in these cases I don’t have the chance to do that.

read more

25th July 2018

Nearing the end of the Poirot canon, this story follows the elderly detective as he’s asked to investigate a very cold case - as the mother-in-law-to-be of a young woman digs to find out what really happened to her parents.

It’s a complicated case, and leads to the usual approach of interviewing a rich variety of witnesses, gathering seemingly random pieces of information before putting together a startling conclusion.

In this case, I felt that some aspects were a little too obvious. And yet other things that really stood out to me turned out to be red herrings, and I think almost too much so - it felt more like the truth was hidden behind distractions rather than assembled from little jigsaw pieces.

Overall though a good story, and one that does the series justice as the final ‘regular’ episode.

read more

4th May 2017

I've lost count of what number this is in Agatha Christie's epic series of Poirot stories, but it's certainly one of the later ones, and yet retains the charm, comedy and mastery of mystery that she wrote throughout.

Although a seemingly simple tale from the outset, it becomes increasingly more complex. I'm not sure whether I was distracted, but the resolution had me baffled right up to the end, and honestly it felt like it may have been a bit over complex towards the conclusion.

Perhaps not one of the best in the series, or one that I would recommend, but definitely a worthy entry in the canon and an entertaining read.

read more

6th July 2016

I decided to do something different with this Poirot novel. Instead of just read along, get a bit confused between characters, and eventually stumble upon the right answer moments before the big reveal, I would take copious notes, in the form of triples, that would mean I could take in the entire plot, make logical connections, identify contradictions, and come to some sensible conclusions as early as possible.

I started taking notes on my phone's notepad application, then when that proved awkward and slow switched to scribbling longhand notes in a notebook. I managed to keep this up into chapter seven. A week had passed, and I was barely making any progress with the story. Perhaps I was noting down too much - but how did I tell what was important and what wasn't? I gave up on this approach and continued reading in the more traditional manner.

Third Girl has an interesting set up for Poirot, in that it isn't clear at the start of the story if a murder has taken place or not, and much of the narrative is focused on investigations that are different from the usual. Christie once again makes great use of her crime-author character, Ariadne Oliver, to add some fantastic comic moments to the plot and keep the story flowing.

It's another good mystery from the leader in her class. Christie puts together a complex plot, and I just about managed to work out one of the key secrets that came at the end, while many more managed to slip past unnoticed and left me feeling surprised at what I'd missed.

read more