Tommy and Tuppence Beresford make their last appearance in this 1973 novel, which was also the last Christie novel to be written.
Read the short version of this review on bukluv.com.
The Beresfords, now in their seventies, buy a house in the country and as usually happens in Christie novels, find a mystery to uncover. The events relating to the mystery, however, happened decades ago when they were still babies.
I love reading Agatha Christie mysteries, and I usually overlook the Christie cliches and try to enjoy the novel. The victims in Christie's novels more or less always are poisoned. The dialogue usually drags a trifle longer than it should. And in her later novels, including this one, there are far too many references to novels of the past, as if trying to relive the past glory.
Postern of Fate, however, is the worst in term of all the negative qualities I mentioned.
The tone of the novel is almost that of a children's novel. And I don't mean that in a good way. Most of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven novels sound a lot more mature than this one.
The most irritating part of the book was the constant references to earlier books by their titles. I really wouldn't mind a few references to previous books in a series, but common sense dictates that the references not use the title of the books. How many people actually say in real life, "didn't you solve the N or M case?". The characters of a series usually don't get to read the prequels of the books, they live through them... or get poisoned, if you're a character in an Agatha Christie novel.
The poisoning of the victims happens way too often in Agatha Christie novels. In keeping with that tradition, here too the victim is poisoned. There is a gunshot thrown in sometime late in the book, but by that time I didn't care if Christie had -- finally -- found a new way to kill her characters.
I normally enjoy the mysteries of Agatha Christie, I really do. But this is unfortunately not one that I will think of with fondness. Christie has completely lost the plot with this one. There's nothing left to do but try and forget this books and enjoy the earlier works of the author.
Rating : 1.5/5
