Agatha Christie..
An author I've come to know quite well while pursuing my Centennial Challenge. She was one hell of a productive writer, to say the least and while it's not so easy to find novels from the early years from this 100 year spanned challenge, I'm bound to find one or two Christie novels.
So, I read one again. It almost feels like cheating when I choose one of these quaint little detective novels to tick of yet another year, but when this challenge sometimes feels like it has endured for a 100 years, I'm easy on myself.
First of all.. my opinion on 'whodunnit' novels hasn't changed. It's like a B-movie, which you know you wouldn't willfully pick up or choose to watch, but sometimes when you're just surfing the channels you get stuck in one of those little drama's and you end up watching it until the end because you want to know how it ends.
This novel is much the same.
The premise if fairly easy. It all starts with a seance, a haunting message, after which a body is found. It's not entirely a closed room mystery, but it doesn't expand much further than the boundaries of the town in which the murder happens.
The novel has a very good pace and instead of drawing the conclusion out of a Hercule Poirot hat, we are sitting on the shoulder of a young woman, Emily, who is trying to find the murderer to acquit her fiancee. We know what she knows and it's not until the last 10 pages where she withholds information for the reader, which is then revealed in an climactic break through.
Yep.. that's about it. Maybe there's more depth to it that I didn't notice, I won't argue with that. It's just not something I'd remember for long. I already have trouble recalling the names of the characters present, and it's been only yesterday that I read its conclusion.
