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katmystery 's review for:
The Clocks
by Agatha Christie
These are going downhill. Fast.
In the last few Poirots, Christie has changed her storytelling model. It used to be that we, with Poirot and a suspect who plays the role of assistant, get to know the suspects, and then the murder happens, then the investigation. As the books went on, Poirot came into the story later and later, and there stopped being an assistant investigator character. Starting a few books ago, Poirot is barely in it at all. Here's the new model: the first 50-100 pages are spent with unremarkable characters. When the murder finally happens, it's investigated by a team of unremarkable policemen who spend the whole time repeating what they know and spinning their wheels. That's the majority of the book. Towards the end, a random character calls up Poirot, tells him everything, and he shows up 20 pages before the end with the solution.
This model doesn't work for me at all. What makes the series good is Poirot. Without him, what on earth is the point? The mysteries themselves aren't bad, but I spend so much of the book being driven insane by confused detectives and boring suspects that, by the time it's revealed, I honestly don't care who did it.
Also, I don't know if it was always this way and I'm only noticing this now because I didn't read Poirots for a while, but Christie's writing appears to have gotten worse. It feels like every scene is being stretched to the maximum, with characters saying hello, would you sit down, I was just thinking this, here's this story that has no significance in the plot, how are you- which really tells you how much plot, story, and character development these have now to have to be stretched out while being less than 300 pages.
The reason this is 3 stars and not 2 is because the characters were average rather than bad and, while the plot wasn't riveting by any means, it was a pretty fast read.
Overall, a disappointment.
In the last few Poirots, Christie has changed her storytelling model. It used to be that we, with Poirot and a suspect who plays the role of assistant, get to know the suspects, and then the murder happens, then the investigation. As the books went on, Poirot came into the story later and later, and there stopped being an assistant investigator character. Starting a few books ago, Poirot is barely in it at all. Here's the new model: the first 50-100 pages are spent with unremarkable characters. When the murder finally happens, it's investigated by a team of unremarkable policemen who spend the whole time repeating what they know and spinning their wheels. That's the majority of the book. Towards the end, a random character calls up Poirot, tells him everything, and he shows up 20 pages before the end with the solution.
This model doesn't work for me at all. What makes the series good is Poirot. Without him, what on earth is the point? The mysteries themselves aren't bad, but I spend so much of the book being driven insane by confused detectives and boring suspects that, by the time it's revealed, I honestly don't care who did it.
Also, I don't know if it was always this way and I'm only noticing this now because I didn't read Poirots for a while, but Christie's writing appears to have gotten worse. It feels like every scene is being stretched to the maximum, with characters saying hello, would you sit down, I was just thinking this, here's this story that has no significance in the plot, how are you- which really tells you how much plot, story, and character development these have now to have to be stretched out while being less than 300 pages.
The reason this is 3 stars and not 2 is because the characters were average rather than bad and, while the plot wasn't riveting by any means, it was a pretty fast read.
Overall, a disappointment.