A review by ujames1978
The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

1.0

I could barely even 'START' this rambling pile of fertilizer, let alone finish it. Because although it's a little too late to be giving Ms. Christie feedback on this novel, having the character who's being compelled to listen to their acquaintance's interminable. rambling exposition dump instead of just saying that "I need you to deliver some papers for me" demand that he get to the God Forsaken point doesn't magically solve the problem of it being interminable, rambling B.S! And as soon as I realised that all of this tedious whittering was literally just the set up for a 'Comedy Of Errors' in which an English snob would be pretending to be a gold-hunting Canadian as he tried to return blackmail letters to an unidentified woman and deliver a manuscript which would undermine the British Government's attempts to restore the monarchy of blah, blah, blah, blah, Godforsaken blah... I refused to waste any more of my time. Because as magnificent as Agatha Christie's murder mysteries undoubtably were, you don't hire a plumber to fix a chimney. And as a failed writer myself, it's almost comforting to know that even the greatest writers of all time could still churn out unmitigated garbage; either because they needed the money or because they genuinely couldn't tell the difference.

After all, as the baffling number of 4 & 5 star reviews of this book serve to demonstrate, once you've created a name for yourself as one of the greatest of all time in a particular field, people will just assume that 'EVERYTHING' you do must be solid, 24 carat gold, creating an "Emperor's New Clothes" effect. And when almost everyone is praising you for everything you do around the clock, it's incredibly easy to buy into the hype and genuinely believe that you can do no wrong.