tombomp 's review for:

4:50 from Paddington by Agatha Christie

2.0

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I think my disappointment is partly cause near the end I had someone else pinned. Even if they made less sense, Marple hinted at them a few times and their motive is a reasonable one. Here, everything's set up for this person but their motive is... less than stellar.

Spoiler

If your plan is to marry the daughter and take the money (a plan which requires you to murder 4/5 people to collect it in its entirety, btw. a plan which will almost certainly be discovered), it seems a bit premature to start murdering before you've even got engaged. I mean yeah it'd be more suspicious but also less of a crapshot.

Also, to start murdering people while there's a lot of attention on the case because of another murder? I guess it was an attempt to frame someone else but given there was no evidence to implicate anyone else it wasn't very convincing.

Spoiler

Also, he planted one piece of evidence in such a silly way that it feels absurd - the 2 kids were examining everywhere for evidence and then found a piece of an envelope in a waste shed. Marple suggests he deliberately lead them to look there, but we have no evidence they ever talked. To expect them to find an envelope in a huge shed of waste paper seems to be expecting rather too much.

In fact, the murder which opens the book seems a little poorly planned - to murder someone on a train in public, regardless of it being non-corridor and having the blind down - seems very dangerous. What if someone saw you disposing of the body? Also,

Spoiler

the murderer isn't interviewed by the police in the same way as the others even though we KNOW he has intimate knowledge of the house, which is apparently their reason for interviewing everyone else. It just feels a little silly that we don't even get him to give a lie. Of course, it's all part of trying to keep him out of people's mind as a possible suspect but still.

Also, the whole thing was wrapped up in about 4-5 short pages. Seemed incredibly rapid.

Really I can't complain cause everything was fair and the evidence did point to him. But Christie can't write characters that well - she's very tell, not show - so when the mystery's weak the whole thing falls down. Not a bad book by any means, and an easy read that's interesting enough, but just a weaker effort that leaves some disappointment.

By the way, I saw someone else suggest this, so I'll say I thought the murderer was

Spoiler

the father. Unfortunately this doesn't really fit everything: I can't think of a reason for him to commit the original murder, for example, although I'm sure one could have easily come up - maybe even just he didn't want to spend more money supporting someone? But he had a perfect motive: he hated most of his kids a lot and was constantly talking about how he'd outlive them while also worrying about having to spend money on them. During the poisonings later on he's mentioned as causing a fuss several times that allowed the poisonings to occur. He'd naturally be assumed to be the target because his death allows other people to inherit a lot of money. He has intimate knowledge of the house, including the sarcophagus. Marple tells a story right near the end about someone killing their children for exactly this reason that's clearly supposed to implicate him but there's stuff throughout that implicates him and it'd be unexpected but not a little ridiculous like the real ending is