Reviews - Sparkling Cyanide

1.12k reviews for:

Sparkling Cyanide

Agatha Christie

3.8 AVERAGE

amaranthe98's review against another edition

5.0

mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: N/A

Loveable characters: N/A

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

merlinamandarina's review against another edition

5.0

Me gustó bastante, y primera vez puedo decir que le acerté con mi sospechoso aunque bueno igual me falto la mitad de la historia xd ni se me pasó por la cabeza pensar en Victor más que como una sanguijuela con su propia madre. Pero me alegro que ninguno de los otros fuera el villano, me caían bien aunque fueran "unos pomposos".

stardustsprite's review against another edition

3.0

Listened to on audiobook.

nicrtay's review against another edition

5.0

I figured this might be a good, perhaps blackly comedic, New Years Eve read.

Sparkling Cyanide was a treat. I'm really starting to enjoy the Colonel Race novels a lot more than some of Christie's other works. I'm starting to feel like the Christie novels sans-Poirot go by in a heartbeat compared Christie's staple series. Maybe because the secondary characters get more 'stage time', so to speak, and are able to be fleshed out more than the background characters in a Poirot novel. Might be sacrilege for me to say that, but I stand by it.

I think what made this one stand out is the changing of perspective. Each character had their time to tell their part of the story. Sometimes they over-lapped. Sometimes there were factual inconsistencies. It made another great way to try to piece together who the culprit was. My favourite inconsistency being a certain character mentioning that his wife was not aware of something, and then the next chapter has his wife admitting that, of course, she knew. Just golden.

Happy New Years. Bottoms up.

jennierigg's review against another edition

3.0

The plot and the intrigue are all classic Christie; in that regard it was comfort reading. I spotted the mechanism but not the murderer, which is always satisfying. I like being a little hoodwinked by a writer if they do it in an interesting enough way. So far so good.

However, this would have had four stars were it not for two things: firstly the liberal sprinkling of casual racism (which I'm sure was all very acceptable at the time etc etc but just jars and jolts me out of the story these days); and secondly the extremely lay understanding of politics with which Dame Agatha sketches out the life of the MP character. I'm used to her being better researched than this.

So yes, enjoyable, but not so timeless as a lot of other Christie novels.