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nickseeleywriter 's review for:
Black Coffee
by Agatha Christie
The best thing that can be said of this book is that it reminds one what an great prose stylist Agatha Christie actually was. Never flashy or too-clever, she nevertheless always had just the right words to sum up a character or situation, and beautiful eye for the inner lives of the people who populated her novels. Charles Osborne's attempt to imitate her style reads like the effort of an enthusiastic but uninspired university sophomore: leaden, over-written and under observed. Every sentence lands on the ear like a baseball bat. Every transition from Osborne's prose to Christie's dialogue is a train crash. Underneath this mess is a charming, if slightly paint-by-numbers Poirot mystery, but really, I would much rather just read Christie's stage play.