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A review by mafiabadgers
Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
First read 12/2024
I'm not a big murder mystery fan, so I picked this up for seasonal purposes. It didn't even have snow, which was disappointing, but I did appreciate the way that the murder was lightly framed in terms of a pagan tradition. One could read the book as staging the return of older, bloodthirstier rites, displacing the more overtly peaceful Christian ways that supplanted them. I would have liked to have seen more of this.
The beginning is rather drab, moving through the standard moments: the introduction of an improbably varied cast, heavily stereotyped to help the reader keep track of them all; the gruesome murder; a nice little array of physical clues; the arrival of the detective and the subsequent tedious interviews, rattling off times and locations in the hopes of catching some small inconsistency. It's all so far-fetched, particularly the ridiculous cast, that it begins to feel a little camp. Add into this a small, fat, eccentric detective, perfectly willing to be distracted from the case by other men's resplendent moustaches, and it turns out to be more enjoyable than the first half had given me to expect. Christie's particular brand of eugenics is on display: the Spanish lady is automatically suspect by virtue of her hot Southern blood, and the victim's children all display aspects of either his or his wife's character, regardless of how much they actually had to do with their parents. Blood will out, it seems.
I'm not a big murder mystery fan, so I picked this up for seasonal purposes. It didn't even have snow, which was disappointing, but I did appreciate the way that the murder was lightly framed in terms of a pagan tradition. One could read the book as staging the return of older, bloodthirstier rites, displacing the more overtly peaceful Christian ways that supplanted them. I would have liked to have seen more of this.
The beginning is rather drab, moving through the standard moments: the introduction of an improbably varied cast, heavily stereotyped to help the reader keep track of them all; the gruesome murder; a nice little array of physical clues; the arrival of the detective and the subsequent tedious interviews, rattling off times and locations in the hopes of catching some small inconsistency. It's all so far-fetched, particularly the ridiculous cast, that it begins to feel a little camp. Add into this a small, fat, eccentric detective, perfectly willing to be distracted from the case by other men's resplendent moustaches, and it turns out to be more enjoyable than the first half had given me to expect. Christie's particular brand of eugenics is on display: the Spanish lady is automatically suspect by virtue of her hot Southern blood, and the victim's children all display aspects of either his or his wife's character, regardless of how much they actually had to do with their parents. Blood will out, it seems.