Poirot Loses a Client by Agatha Christie

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

‘Poirot Loses a Client’ lost me a bit in viewing Christie as a great author. The formula is mostly the same. Someone is dead. Group of people are suspects. Everyone is overly talkative about what they think is going on. Suspects gathered. Resolution. After reading Edmund Crispin, I wish Christie thought of fleshing out a plot, characters, setting and writing.

This story has Poirot, and pal, enter the story with little explanation as to who they are and why they would be involved in the plot. For those of us that know the characters, we could say we don’t need the background. I feel a book needs to anticipate new readers and not make assumptions.

Moreover, the story feels like it has been pushed through a template, as referred to above.

Getting to the conclusion is a plodding roaming of Poirot finding one talkative character after another. Not all suspects would spill so much. One way Christie could have made the story more interesting story would be having the characters stonewalling Poirot.

The resolution was a bit frustrating after getting through the rest of the book.

There is good character development, with the exception of proper introduction of the two main characters.

Bottom line: I do not recommend this book. 4 of ten points.

View all my reviews

Hickory Dickory Death by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Hickory Dickory Death’ is a nice mystery with a slew of suspects, but a suspect plot. Hercule Poirot rather stumbles into what seems to be a mere issue of theft until turning into murder. His involvement seems a bit of a stretch to begin with, but as the story goes the narrative seems less Poirot and more the authorities as if Poirot seemed more interested in the theft than the deaths.

There area long string of suspects that Christie does her best to discern, but still seems a bit too similar and that confused me while reading. In today’s radicalism view of political correctness, it’s likely younger folks will needlessly cringe at Christie’s attempt to distinguish her characters. It is not one world. We are not one people. Unfortunately, Christie doesn’t do enough to kick up a notch the differences.

Something else Christie doesn’t expound enough about is the basis of the solution to the mystery. There’s a lot to it and could have been far better defined involving dangers which leads to murder.

The writing is good as Chrisite is, but she sets too much up with the assumption that all know Poirot. The rest of the plot becomes far too convoluted due to what i commented about above. There’s a very good plot here and the underlying mystery has been done many times. Just done far better than Christie has done. Though, in that this is from 1955, Christie is early in handling subject matter far more common today.

Christie is a legend and i hate to write this involving legends, but…
Bottom line: i don’t recommend this book.

View all my reviews

Nice illustration on the cover of Agatha Christie’s Hickory Dickory Death.

Here’s a cover by Harvey Kidder from Murder in the Cardais Coach (later named Murder on the Orient Express).

This version of Agatha Christie’s Three Blind Mice has a Mike Ludlow cover. The wiping away of the film on the pane is amazing painting work.