Alas, Mrs. McGinty; we hardly knew you.

Really. I mean that. She was a widow, a woman who cleaned houses and took in lodgers to make ends meet; had a niece whom she saw at holidays, and was perhaps a bit of a nosy parker; nothing extraordinary to fill the obituary. When Inspector Spence visits the retired Poirot, he shares his troubling concern that the man he arrested for murdering Mrs. McGinty, and who is now facing the death penalty, is not truly guilty. Yes, yes; the circumstantial evidence was damning, but James Bentley’s milquetoast personality seems so wrong for the deed. Could dear Poirot perhaps put his little grey cells to work? But the clues won’t be found in McGinty’s past; as Hercule Poirot points out “For, you see, Mon cher Spence, if Mrs. McGinty is just an ordinary charwoman–it is the murderer who must be extraordinary.”

It is true; the murderer is a bit extraordinary. The plotting has an interesting premise, albeit perhaps hard to understand in the modern age. A second murder (because there always is one, isn’t there?) was unsurprising. Overall, the book reminded me more than a bit of [b:A Murder Is Announced|16298|A Murder Is Announced (Miss Marple, #5)|Agatha Christie|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348508635s/16298.jpg|2288775], so perhaps take a break between if you are on a Christie binge, or perhaps visit one of her more exotic locales in between.

For once, Christie leads with Hercule instead of consulting him later, providing an enjoyable stroll down nostalgia lane. Poirot laments the loss of Hastings as a sounding board and audience, but since Poirot’s investigative strategy is to stir up the village, he ends up ‘confiding’ in a number of people. We are treated to Christie’s standard cast of the post-war English village: a penniless but connected couple with a shabby family manse, a overly dramatic woman who enjoys her own tales of woe, the dutiful but repressed daughter, a bold young woman emblematic of the new age, an insecure, unsmart woman attempting to climb the social ladder, a postmistress with a penchant for gossip. All standard in many Christies, along with the semi-invalid elderly woman and her playwright son, echoes of Marple’s nephew Raymond.

“Mrs. Sweetiman imparted all this information with relish. She prided herself on being well informed. Mrs. Weatherby whose desire for knitting needles had perhaps been prompted by a desire to know what was going on, paid for her purchase.“

Tone seems on the playful side, which self-referential remarks on writing, appreciation and performance. When Mrs. Oliver and her apples make an appearance, it becomes quite clear that Christie is taking an authorial aside to muse on readers who obstinately prefer troublesome characters and playwrights who take license with an author’s characters. “‘How do I know?’ said Mrs. Oliver crossly. ‘How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad!… Why all the idiotic mannerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something–and people seem to like it–and then you go on–and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life.”

Poor Dame Christie. She seems to have had at least a gastronomic sort of revenge on Poirot at least, by boarding him at the worst guest-house possible: "I thought I would open a bottle of those raspberries I put up last summer. They seem to have a bit of mould on top but they say nowadays that that doesn't matter... --practically penicillin." If it is any post-humous consolation, in my old age, I prefer Miss Marple to the conceited Poirot, but I enjoy them both. Mrs. McGinty's Dead is one worth adding to the library.

Three and a half self-referential stars. ( )

I enjoyed listening to this mystery. But I must say, I did not figure out who committed the murder. ( )

Unlike many Poirot novels, this one doesn't have a first part telling the background of the murder and the suspects. here it's all Poirot's investigation. An old woman has been murdered and a young man who was her lodger has just been tried and convicted. All the evidence points to him. And yet, the policeman who first investigated the case is not satisfied. The evidence is saying one thing, but his instinct is saying something different. He goes to ask an old acquantaince, a foreign detective by the name of Hercule Poirot, whether he'd care to look into the matter, in the interest of justice.

I was worried because in the beginning the mystery seemed uninspiring. A sordid murder, with the convicted suspect a thoroughly dull and uninteresting person. But soon it got much more interesting. Yet another classic Poirot novel, very enjoyable. ( )

A man accused of murdering Ms. McGinty is about to be hanged but the detective who had handled the case has his doubts so he calls on Poirot to at least investigate a year old murder to ease his doubts. An inkstand, an old photograph & a town apparently holding more secrets leads Poirot to a baffling & twisted case. When a second murder is committed, Poirot discovers "Evelyn" is the clue but can he find the killer before an innocent man is hanged for a murder he didn't commit. ( )

'Mrs. McGinty's Dead' was described to me as "A lesser Christie" and I think that sums it up. It's good enough to read to the end but it's not going to linger in the memory or be a book I'd want to re-read.

The plot is twisty in a way that stretches credibility. It's one of those Christie books that is all puzzle and no personality. The mystery is a sort of 'Find The Lady' card trick. There is a very limited pool of suspects who are all, like the cards, hidden face down and any one of whom could the murderer. Like the card trick, Christie keeps switching attention around from card to card and like the card trick the whole purpose is to distract and tempt. It was fun in its way but I felt that it plodded a little and that too much time was spent discussing which card hid the Lady without turning any of them over.

I've never liked Poirot and, at the start of 'Mrs. McGinty's Dead' it seemed to me that Agatha Christie no longer liked him much either. He came across as a sad little old man who missed Hastings because he now has no one to show off to or belittle, whose main regret in life was that one can only eat three times a day, who was blind to his declining celebrity and who had no compunction about lying to everyone he meets. Unexpectedly, Christie's depiction of the dissonance between Poirot's faded fame and his self-perception made me feel sorry for him for the first time.

For me, the most enjoyable and memorable thing about the book was the crime novelist, Mrs. Oliver, a recurring character who seems to be an avatar for Christie herself. I loved how Chrisie used Mrs. Oliver to voice her own frustrations about screen adaptations of her novels that largely ignore the original text. My favourite part was when Mrs. Oliver was talking about the central character in her books Sven Hjerson, a Finn who loves crudités, cold winter baths and solving murder mysteries and who is clearly meant to be an avatar for Poirot. She declares that she regrets ever creating him and wonders why she made him a Finn when she knew nothing about Finland and why she made him so odd. Her ambivalent relationship with him is summed up when she says, "Of course he’s idiotic, but people like him".

I listened to Hugh Fraser narrating the audiobook. He did his usual solid job but even he couldn't stop the prose from feeling mechanical at times. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.

https://soundcloud.com/harpercollinspublishers/mrs-mcgintys-dead-by-agatha ( )