When I say that I breezed through this book, it's saying that it took me only five days to finish this little thing.
The page count is mostly responsible for the rapid readthrough, but I must say that I enjoyed it a bit, despite my affliction concerning crime novels.
Agatha Christie seems a bit of a tired writer to me, not really putting forward the extra kick in her novels I truly yearn for. It's like I'm reading a script, rather than a fully grown novel.
In the Unexpected Guest that feeling doesn't come to live until the middle of the novel.
It opened rather well, it had my attention right away with its unusual premise..
which is.. a man stumbles upon a crime scene after having ridden his car into a ditch during heavy mist. The woman holding the gun is still in the room.
Instead of calling the police, the 'guest' tries to doctor a way out of this mess for the woman he barely knows.
Then the inquery starts off course, which is a little dull in my opinion.
Agatha Christie is commonly known and loved for her exquisite dialogues, but I just don't like reading what they are saying. If I liked that, I would just watch more movies instead of reading novels. It's not tangible.
And it's the only way how Christie can get away with her famous knack of putting you on the wrong track.
In The Unexpected Guest, she tries and succeeds multiple times to make you change your mind, and even though the eventual answer never crossed my mind, I wasn't taken aback.
For that to happen, I must be immersed in the novel first and that just didn't happen.
Well, the formula worked for her and it seems to work for a lot of people.
I'm just hard to please.
