"Taken at the Flood", "Third Girl", and "Hallowe'en Party", by Agatha Christie

2014-05-02 : previous : next : index : [books]


Three different mystery novels by Agatha Christie.  All of these have the same rough structure: a comical introduction to a case that simultaneously reveals a bit about Poirot's personality, multiple deaths unfold, detailed gathering of seemly unrelated evidence, and a final dramatic solution that links everything together.  The details are vastly different, of course.

"Taken at the Flood" was a series of deaths that are linked to a large sum of inheritance.  Most notable feature in this book is that not every death in a mystery novel is a murder case, and discerning which one was which was an interesting exercise.  Separately, this book also aims to illustrate how people's character changes in desperate times.  Among these three books, this one was the most serious.

"Third Girl" was about a murder that might have happened, the suspected killer does not know whether she really killed someone.  Bulk of this book deals with the question of whether there had been any murder or not, highlight of which was a bloodthirsty Poirot saying "I want a murder".  It turns out to be a very clever psychological trick at play.  Among these three books, this one was the most humorous.

"Hallowe'en Party" starts with a murder of a child, possibly related to some murders that might have happened in the past.  This book was published right after "Third Girl" and the characters felt very similar in many ways, besides the recurring Ariadne Oliver.  Instead of a central character whom everyone believed to be mad, in this book we have a girl whom everyone believed to be a liar -- plus a different narcissist character who actually is mad.  Among these three books, this one was the most mystery-like, from the way the evidence unfolds to the frantic pace in capturing the criminal in the conclusion.  Careful readers will probably have a better chance at solving the mystery here than the other two books.

I packed these three books at random for a recent business trip, got through the first one and half of the second one during the trip, and took a lot longer to finish the third one after I got back.  These ones don't seem as well optimized as some other Agatha Christie mysteries (some superfluous events, some evidences presented very late), but still very enjoyable and worth reading nonetheless.


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