Review: Curtain - Poirot's Last Case (Agatha Christie)

This book -- as the title suggests -- is the last case featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and his friend Captain Arthur Hastings. Although Curtain was actually written in the 1940s, it wasn't published until 1975 which is why the books doesn't fit in well with the chronology of the series. It brings Poirot and Hastings back to Styles, the place where they met and solved their first case together in The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

Poirot, now in very poor health and confined to a wheelchair, invites Hastings (who is now a widower) to Styles Court in Essex where now lives. When Hastings arrives there, Poirot tells him that one of the lodgers at Styles is a serial murderer. He gives Hastings a brief account of five different murders and points out that even though there was no doubt about who committed the murders, there was someone in the background who was actually pulling the strings. Despite knowing the identity of the criminal, Poirot refuses to reveal it to Hastings.

I wouldn't rate this as one of the best Hercule Poirot novels, but the ending is good enough to make it a fitting conclusion to the Poirot series. For most part of the book we have to put up with Hastings making his wild guesses as to the identity of the criminal while Poirot sits quietly in the background. All the time we see Poirot doing nothing and asking Hastings (and in effect, us) to wait for the murderer to show himself, which gets rather irritating after some time. There are some clues and red herrings as usual, but the ending still comes as a total surprise and makes up for us having to listen to Hastings' speculations.

When Poirot signs off at the end of the novel saying, "we shall never hunt together again, mon ami", it is to remind us of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which he signed off with "we shall hunt together again". Poirot may have said his farewells, but I'm not saying goodbye just yet. There are a dozen or so Poirot novels that I haven't read so far. :-)

My Rating: 8/10

Review: Dumb Witness (Agatha Christie)

Emily Arundell is a rich woman whose fortune will go to her nephew and nieces on her death. When they come visiting their aunt, Emily falls down the stairs in what is apparently an accident, but she suspects otherwise and writes to Hercule Poirot, asking him to meet her. The letter gets delayed by some time and by the time Poirot visits her, she has already died of natural causes. When her will is read out, everyone is shocked to find out that Emily had changed it so that all her wealth went to her companion, Mrs Lawson and the relatives get nothing. Poirot's investigation leads him to believe that the "accident" was caused by a string tied across the staircase to trip Emily who was in the habit of walking around the house at night.

The title Dumb Witness refers to Emily's dog, Bob who was supposed to have left a ball at the top of the stairs which caused Emily to trip (Poirot later proves that this wasn't the case). The dog has very little to do with the story except for this incident and is there in the book for little more that for displaying Hastings' great affection for dogs -- Bob becomes Hastings' pet at the end of the book.

Rich old lady, young relatives desperate for money, so-called accidents, poisoning -- it's a typical Agatha Christie story, but one that perhaps fails to maintain the high standards that we have come to expect of Christie. The book seems too slow and the solution a bit too obvious. There are a couple of details that don't fit in. For example, how is it that Mrs Lawson can notice the initials on the suspect's brooch and still not be able to see that she was hammering a nail onto the staircase? And how could Hastings -- or anyone for that matter -- forget something that we were all taught in primary school -- that a mirror always interchanges the left and right sides of the image? This slight on Hastings' intellect -- in spite of its ridiculously low standards ;-) -- isn't something that can be explained that easily.

My Rating: 5/10

Review: The ABC Murders (Agatha Christie)

A serial killer, who calls himself ABC, writes to Hercule Poirot before each murder telling of the time and place where the murder will take place. Poirot and the police start working together to catch the murderer, but they are unable to stop him on the first three occasions. The killer apparently has no motive and kills at random, based on the names of the people. He has killed Alice Ascher of Andover, Betty Barnard of Bexhill-on-Sea, and Sir Carmichael Clarke of Churston and the only connection between the murders is the first letter of the names of the victims and the places are in alphabetical order and beside each victim an ABC railway guide is found.

When Poirot receives the challenge for the 'D' murder, he teams up with the police and the friends and relatives of the first three victims to stop the killer at any cost. Even though they fail to prevent the murder, they manage to catch the killer, who is called Alexander Bonaparte Cust. He confesses to the crimes, but has no idea how or why he comitted them. Poirot's explanation of how a man could kill four people without knowing how he did it forms the ending of what is perhaps the best Hercule Poirot mystery I've read so far.

People who like to solve mystery themselves while they're reading are probably cursing me for mentioning the name of the killer in this review. Don't worry, that's not a spoiler. That name is mentioned right at the beginning of the book and we know all along who the main suspect is. Poirot is the one in the dark throughout this book.

Christie has deviated from her usual style here. Instead the "who did it?" aspect of the mystery, the psychology of the crime has been given more prominence. Usually it's the crime/clues/suspects/motive/alibi formula that is used. Here Poirot doesn't have any suspects and has to rely on understanding the mind of the murderer to prevent the next crime.

Another one of the reasons why I loved this book was because Poirot's famed little grey cells were really stretched to their limit and most of the time he looked totally helpless. Serves him right for ridiculing poor old Captain Hastings all the time. This is one of those rare occasions where Hastings' common sense comes in more useful than all of Poirot's little grey cells. ;-)

My Rating: 10/10.

Review: Lord Edgware Dies (Agatha Christie)

The famous actress Jane Wilkinson keeps telling anyone who will listen that she'd like nothing better than to take a taxi to the house of her estranged husband, Lord Edgware, and murder him. She also pleads with Poirot to convince Lord Edgware to divorce her, only for Poirot to find that Edgware had already agreed to divorce. Soon after that Edgware is found murdered and many witnesses claim to have seen Jane Wilkinson actually taking a taxi to Edgware's house and meeting him. Poirot, unable to accept a straightforward solution to this case, starts looking for another explanation.

Poirot finds out that it was a young actress Carlotta Adams who took the taxi to Edgware's house and she was doing so to win a bet. But before he can ask her who challenged her for the bet, she's found dead. Another man, tries to speak to Poirot about his suspicions, but he too is murdered before Poirot can speak to him. Poirot has a nice cast of suspects here -- the wife who's declared that she wants to kill her husband, the nephew who inherits the uncle's property, the daughter who hated the father. And every single one of them has an excellent alibi.

I always try to guess the identity of the criminal when I'm reading an Agatha Christie mystery novel, but this time I was totally baffled. Every time I suspected someone, that person either died or disappeared. The murderer nearly got away, but luckily for Poirot, a remark made by a passer-by to his friend as they walk past Poirot on the road put him on the right track.

My Rating: 7/10

Review: Poirot Investigates (Agatha Christie)

The problem with Poirot Investigates is that it takes away the whole point of reading a Hercule Poirot mystery. In a full length Poirot novel, Christie gives us all the clues we'll need to figure out the mystery. The challenge is to recognize these clues, sort out the "real" clues from the red herrings and find the answer before Poirot reveals it. But with a short story collection like this one, we hardly get any time to make up our minds about what's going on and before we know it, the story comes to an end.

One of the stories in this book, The Million Dollar Bond Robbery was what got me interested in Agatha Christie's books back in my school days. We had this reading excercise in which we were given the first half of the story which contains the background of the crime and Poirot's interrogation of all the suspects. By the end of the hour we had to write down whom we suspected and why, after which our teacher read out the last part of the story. The whole thing depended on whether or not we could read the significance of the reply of a suspect to one completely innocent looking question from Poirot. After that I started looking at Christie's books as on long puzzle with the clues scattered across the book. Most of the time I do get it wrong, but it's great fun to try and guess the ending while I'm reading the book.

Unfortunately, on reading the same story in this book, I found that the story we were given back in school was not the original. And worse, the original did not actually contain any clues about the crime. The clue was added into the story we were given in school so we could have a go at solving it. So much for the story that converted me into a Christie fan! :-( Most of the other stories in the collection too are like that; we have to wait until the end of the story to know the details of the crime. There's not much of a chance to solve the crime ourself.

This is the first Hercule Poirot book I've read that is narrated in first person by Poirot's friend, Captain Hastings. Until now, I have been seeing some similarities between Poirot and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. But with Hastings as his sidekick, Poirot's and Holmes' similarities become even more glaring. Extreme intelligence, incredible vanity and total lack of respect for his sidekick's intellingence makes Poirot look very much like Holmes. It makes me wonder if Agatha Christie wrote the Poirot/Hastings stories as a tribute to the Holmes/Watson mysteries.

My Rating: 4/10

Other Reviews:

The Relentless Pursuit of Cold Shivers (Rating: 3/5)

Yaaay!!! I'm done with my first book of the new year. Not very impressed with it, though. Now there's a bunch of Agatha Christies waiting to be read; all of them are narrated by Hastings. I hope they aren't as disappointing as this one.