A review by starthelostgirl
Black Coffee by Charles Osborne

1.0

I don’t really understand the point of this book, to be honest. I haven’t read the original Christie script but I went into this understanding it was an adaptation of one of her plays, and therefore didn’t expect it to be a fully-fleshed out story like her novels. There’s just… no mystery. It’s so surface level that they point out everything explicitly. They literally tell us who puts poison in the coffee in the first hour of the book (I listened to the audiobook). There are no subtle clues or little callbacks for Poirot to use to put together the solution. It was weird to have Hastings in a story that he wasn’t narrating, and especially weird that he was flirting with another woman when it was set after his marriage to Cinderella. All of the characters, even established ones like Poirot, just felt flat and one-dimensional.