A Hercule Poirot mystery. Once again I marvel at how good Christie was. Every clue is there, but placed so carefully and casually that you completely overlook it. She breaks the rules, when she wants to, and does it so well you would wonder why such a rule was in place. It would be a spoiler to say what the rule is in this case. ( )

Blackmail, identity theft, money and racism, but no Poirot for 50% of the book?
I also bet 20 that the lady at the end will be murdered at some point by the husband ( )

AR: 4.9

A solid mystery with an interesting depiction of post-WW2 England, but loses stars for misogyny and an extremely problematic view of intimate partner violence. WTF Agatha? ( )

It seems to me that for a time now Agatha Christie did not want to write Poirot novels, and she included him because it's what the readers demanded. She had the habit during this period of writing half the novel about the victim and suspects and only introducing Poirot in the second half, to do his investigation. And even in that second part, the investigation is very focused on understanding the character of the suspects. I'm reading the Poirot books, so this should bother me, and it does a little bit, but not much because Christie is very good at this kind of things. It's not true that her characters are made of cardboard.

So, I enjoyed the characters and the general atmosphere of this book a lot. It's only about the ending that I have reservations. First, we have a main female character who has the worst taste in men. To the extent that after one tries to murder her she is still in love with her would-be murderer. Worse, it's not that she was in love and she remains in love after the attempted murder. In fact, she falls in love *because* of the attempted murderer. I do not applaud that character's taste, but fine, I accept this, because there are people who are self-destructive like that. I was more bothered by how one of the murders the author seemed to excuse more than the situation warranted, and how the motive for the other murder was a bit flimsy. Add to that the extremely clever criminal that, when the detective sees through his plot and accuses him, confesses readily, as if demoralized to have lost the battle of wits, without stopping to consider that there isn't really any proof. But fine, that's a silly trope but very usual in the Golden Age of Detection.

All these problems did not spoil my enjoyment of the book, but I'm withdrawing a star because of them. ( )