Reviews

Save for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, there is no mystery writer that I love more than Dame Agatha Christie. When I picked up Sad Cypress it was like going back to an old friend. It had been years since I last read a Christie story. For those of you that read my The Sherlockian review, it should come as no surprise that I’m very fond of Hercule Poirot. Like Sherlock Holmes, Poirot is a marvelous character. His idiosyncrasies are both charming and insulting. Mentally superior to the majority of people and not afraid to say so, it’s a thrill to watch the detective work. But it’s that same superiority that makes me cringe in empathy when someone his put in their place by either Poirot or Holmes. I was excited to see him at work again when I picked up this book. Unfortunately, he was slow to appear.
I’d have to go back and re-read another few stories to be sure but I think I had forgotten how Christie writes her Poirot stories. The first part doesn’t include the detective at all. She introduces the players in this mystery, focusing on character development and spinning the intricate web that Poirot is to entangle. In this case it had to do with an elderly lady, the nurses taking care of her, her niece, a young lady she’s supporting and a whole host of other minor, or seemingly minor, characters. The old and the young lady both die and, eventually, Poirot is brought in. But he’s not brought in to find the guilty person but rather prove the seemingly irrefutably guilty niece is innocent. That’s where the second part of the story starts.

Poirot goes through the cast of characters and interviews them all, counting on them to all lie. They don’t disappoint. They all lie for different reasons and in a particularly poetic thought, Poirot says that lying can tell you as much about the reality of the situation as the truth can. It was little gems like that that save the story. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the story. The characters were rich, but not really that interesting to me. Christie proves once again her grand prowess with dialog. The book is short and the dialog heavy pages make the read especially quick. But dialog is a tricky skill. I speak from experience when I say it’s incredibly hard to write dialog that remains both true to the characters and doesn’t come across as stiff and more suited for the page than the spoken word. That’s perhaps the saving grace of this story. It isn’t a particularly strong story but the back-and-forth between Poirot and the characters and the summary of facts that he gives one of them at the denouement gives you enough spark to keep you from getting bored.