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nicrtay 's review for:
The Big Four
by Agatha Christie
I tried being quite objective in my rating of this book, despite my fairly strong distaste for it. Not distaste in the sense that it was bad. More distaste in the sense that it probably won't appeal to the same target audience as the other novels in this series.
I appreciate that Christie may have had an Ian Fleming-type inspiration for this novel - despite the anachronism in that sentence. But this novel is a far leap from the English country estate murder mystery with which she has built her readership on. This sort of action-packed international secret-agent plot line just doesn't work with Poirot (I can't even picture Poirot moving any faster than a brisk walk to be honest).
This may be a fascinating story for those interested in the aforesaid action-type genre. But it's not for me. I tried really hard to follow the conversations and events, but I felt myself glazing over and had a hard time absorbing all the info dumps enough to be able to predict the following reveals, or even fully understand them.
The one thing that this story had going for it was the character interaction between Poirot and Rossakov. It was nice to be able to see Poirot as being slightly less than emotionally distant. I know she doesn't recur in the series a lot, but any familiarity in an episodic series such as this one is refreshing.
Fortunately, the story picked up a little steam right at the end, but just in enough time for the story to be cut short.
The only thing that kept me reading (other than my completionism) was the Hastings-Poirot interactions.
Poirot: "Hercule Poirot might have been crushed out of existence! A terrible calamity for the world! And you too, mon ami! Though that would not be such a national catastrophe."
Hastings: "...Thank you."
Gold.
I appreciate that Christie may have had an Ian Fleming-type inspiration for this novel - despite the anachronism in that sentence. But this novel is a far leap from the English country estate murder mystery with which she has built her readership on. This sort of action-packed international secret-agent plot line just doesn't work with Poirot (I can't even picture Poirot moving any faster than a brisk walk to be honest).
This may be a fascinating story for those interested in the aforesaid action-type genre. But it's not for me. I tried really hard to follow the conversations and events, but I felt myself glazing over and had a hard time absorbing all the info dumps enough to be able to predict the following reveals, or even fully understand them.
The one thing that this story had going for it was the character interaction between Poirot and Rossakov. It was nice to be able to see Poirot as being slightly less than emotionally distant. I know she doesn't recur in the series a lot, but any familiarity in an episodic series such as this one is refreshing.
Fortunately, the story picked up a little steam right at the end, but just in enough time for the story to be cut short.
The only thing that kept me reading (other than my completionism) was the Hastings-Poirot interactions.
Poirot: "Hercule Poirot might have been crushed out of existence! A terrible calamity for the world! And you too, mon ami! Though that would not be such a national catastrophe."
Hastings: "...Thank you."
Gold.