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In the opening scene, murder mystery writer Ariadne Oliver gets dragged to a Hallowe'en party for kids ages eight to eighteen.
"But you've written lots of books," said Joyce. "You make a lot of money out of them, don't you?"
"In a way," said Mrs. Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue.
"And you've got a detective who's a Finn."
Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy said sternly, "Why a Finn?"
"I've often wondered," Mrs. Oliver admitted truthfully.
She had intended to help out but mostly hangs around eating the apples that are supposed to be saved for party games; she regrets this when Joyce, one of the teenagers who had earlier claimed to have once witnessed a murder and is dismissed as a liar, turns up drowned in the bucket they used for bobbing for apples.
Mrs. Oliver calls in her old friend Poirot, who is forced to do a lot of outdoor detecting in unsuitable patent leather shoes; key locations include a sunken garden, multiple cottage gardens, and a forest. A lot of the main characters are children and teenagers, who are viewed in a distinctly unsentimental manner.
No one seems to have much liked Joyce the murder victim, who is widely believed to have been a liar. But her original claim, which was that she saw something years ago which she only realized had been a murder when she got older, intrigues Poirot. It certainly seems like an odd thing to lie about. And there's no other apparent motive to kill her unless it was a homicidal maniac. (It is almost never a homicidal maniac.) So Poirot starts looking for a murder an unknown number of years in the past that a girl could have seen without realizing what she saw...
This was a re-read of a book I'd re-read relatively recently, so I remembered who the murderer was, though I'd forgotten some complex machinations over a will.
Though flawed by some annoying lecturing on the Good Old Days, the good parts of this are excellent: the opening scene at the Hallowe'en party, the near-magical sunken garden, Ariadne Oliver getting triggered by apples and having to resort to dates, some very funny bits, some deeply creepy bits, a memorable villain and murder motive, and one of my all-time favorite Christie characters, the child Miranda, wise beyond her years in some ways and heartbreakingly not in others. Had I re-read this book earlier, I would have requested Miranda for Yuletide; I really want to know what she did next.
Though multiple people go on and on about Kids These Days, the kids we see are as varied as the adults; some awful, some heroic, some ordinary). Apart from Miranda, I particularly enjoyed two fashionable teenage boys in amazing-sounding outfits (one of them appears in a flowy white shirt, a pink velvet coat, and mauve pants) who are very eager to help Poirot solve the mystery. One of my favorite bits of the book was them spinning theories about the murders and then looking hopefully at Poirot, "like dogs who had fetched their master a bone."
( Read more... )
Christie scale: MEDIUM levels of xenophobia, directed at a Russian refugee who deserved better. HIGH levels of ableism on the subject of mentally ill people being crazed murderers who should be permanently locked up.
Currently $1.99 on Kindle.
"But you've written lots of books," said Joyce. "You make a lot of money out of them, don't you?"
"In a way," said Mrs. Oliver, her thoughts flying to the Inland Revenue.
"And you've got a detective who's a Finn."
Mrs. Oliver admitted the fact. A small stolid boy said sternly, "Why a Finn?"
"I've often wondered," Mrs. Oliver admitted truthfully.
She had intended to help out but mostly hangs around eating the apples that are supposed to be saved for party games; she regrets this when Joyce, one of the teenagers who had earlier claimed to have once witnessed a murder and is dismissed as a liar, turns up drowned in the bucket they used for bobbing for apples.
Mrs. Oliver calls in her old friend Poirot, who is forced to do a lot of outdoor detecting in unsuitable patent leather shoes; key locations include a sunken garden, multiple cottage gardens, and a forest. A lot of the main characters are children and teenagers, who are viewed in a distinctly unsentimental manner.
No one seems to have much liked Joyce the murder victim, who is widely believed to have been a liar. But her original claim, which was that she saw something years ago which she only realized had been a murder when she got older, intrigues Poirot. It certainly seems like an odd thing to lie about. And there's no other apparent motive to kill her unless it was a homicidal maniac. (It is almost never a homicidal maniac.) So Poirot starts looking for a murder an unknown number of years in the past that a girl could have seen without realizing what she saw...
This was a re-read of a book I'd re-read relatively recently, so I remembered who the murderer was, though I'd forgotten some complex machinations over a will.
Though flawed by some annoying lecturing on the Good Old Days, the good parts of this are excellent: the opening scene at the Hallowe'en party, the near-magical sunken garden, Ariadne Oliver getting triggered by apples and having to resort to dates, some very funny bits, some deeply creepy bits, a memorable villain and murder motive, and one of my all-time favorite Christie characters, the child Miranda, wise beyond her years in some ways and heartbreakingly not in others. Had I re-read this book earlier, I would have requested Miranda for Yuletide; I really want to know what she did next.
Though multiple people go on and on about Kids These Days, the kids we see are as varied as the adults; some awful, some heroic, some ordinary). Apart from Miranda, I particularly enjoyed two fashionable teenage boys in amazing-sounding outfits (one of them appears in a flowy white shirt, a pink velvet coat, and mauve pants) who are very eager to help Poirot solve the mystery. One of my favorite bits of the book was them spinning theories about the murders and then looking hopefully at Poirot, "like dogs who had fetched their master a bone."
( Read more... )
Christie scale: MEDIUM levels of xenophobia, directed at a Russian refugee who deserved better. HIGH levels of ableism on the subject of mentally ill people being crazed murderers who should be permanently locked up.
Currently $1.99 on Kindle.
