This is yet another book that goes into the #BritishCrimeClassicsChallenge
I wanted a smaller book to squirrel away into my bag as all the others I had requested from the library were either bigger or heavier. In a hurry to leave I picked the first one in the Christie shelf that I could not conjure up the sory in my head of and brought it home. It took me a while to remember the people in the story and even then, I did not remember the exact culprit although I had those faint gnawing memories trying to say something from the corner of my mind but I paid them no heed and was therefore surprised by the turns the story took.
It is rare that I can forget what the story was about if I have read or watched something before. I spontaneously jump to the next scene in the sequence. As mentioned in an earlier post, I am making sure I slow down with Christie and identify the things that drew me into the web of her fans in middle school. This book may not be one of her best but the richly layered characters and the sharp incisions that are made into people’s actual characters probably is a clue to what I like about these books. This content is probably why many of my friends who read are not big fans. It discusses all the people who sat around a table and watched a woman die at her own party, and each of them gets an individual chapter. They are all fooling either the world or themselves about the way they lead their life and who they want to be. It is not hard for a cynic to identify with traits in all these people, but they struggle through it all. Selfishness is out there in the open, no one pretends (even remotely) to be selfless and that I think is unique because that way you realize that you are not meant to like any of the people.
One vibrant, popular woman is dead. All the people who sat around at that doomed dinner saw her in life differently than anyone else at the table. It takes a while to get the entire picture of the woman, but it fascinating in the way the pieces fit together. As you can see by now, I love the character study or people watching that you get out of reading such a book. The actual solving and the solution take a back seat and are not glorified upon even by the cast of the tale. It was time well spent and I look forward to what I might randomly pick up next.
The last books I reviewed by the same author:
- Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
- The Moving Finger
- Ordeal by Innocence
- They came to Baghdad by
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles
- The Pale Horse
Superfluous Reading 