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thecommonswings's review against another edition
4.0
This is basically top notch second tier golden age crime fiction. The puzzle is elegantly solved and makes complete sense; the red herrings aren’t too obtuse; the detectives manage to work their way through the puzzle through logic, hard work and the very occasional clue. It sags a fair bit in the middle, because really the central idea isn’t designed for a novel length investigation so there’s a lot of chat between characters wandering about the village and a sense of people being moved around a chessboard until the climax finally heads your way
But the good bits are GREAT: the title, and a great deal of our hero’s hunch for the key to the crime, unfolds in a genuinely surprising way but one that never feels like a foul. It lends more to Cards on the Table than I was expecting but as that’s one of the few Christie’s I wholly enjoy I’m fine with that. The best bits are the way in which immediately post war society is evoked: it feels a little bit like the pre-war golden age crime novel in existential crisis: this is a book of spivs, of rations, of (frankly tiresome) carping about conscientious objectors... it feels a lot more real than many other books of its kind. There’s at least one revelation that feels unprecedented regarding experiences of the war
It probably helps that the hero, Bobby Owen, by all accounts, has aged in real time and risen up the ranks as a promising young policeman would. His sidekick is another Punshon detective who has done the same thing. The relationship with Owen and his wife - supportive, occasionally tetchy, loving and grounded - feels very grounded and real. I can’t think of many other golden age detectives whose life outside the books would be as plausible as Owen’s is. Great stuff
But the good bits are GREAT: the title, and a great deal of our hero’s hunch for the key to the crime, unfolds in a genuinely surprising way but one that never feels like a foul. It lends more to Cards on the Table than I was expecting but as that’s one of the few Christie’s I wholly enjoy I’m fine with that. The best bits are the way in which immediately post war society is evoked: it feels a little bit like the pre-war golden age crime novel in existential crisis: this is a book of spivs, of rations, of (frankly tiresome) carping about conscientious objectors... it feels a lot more real than many other books of its kind. There’s at least one revelation that feels unprecedented regarding experiences of the war
It probably helps that the hero, Bobby Owen, by all accounts, has aged in real time and risen up the ranks as a promising young policeman would. His sidekick is another Punshon detective who has done the same thing. The relationship with Owen and his wife - supportive, occasionally tetchy, loving and grounded - feels very grounded and real. I can’t think of many other golden age detectives whose life outside the books would be as plausible as Owen’s is. Great stuff
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