"Crooked House" and "Endless Night", by Agatha Christie

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"Crooked House" and "Endless Night", by Agatha Christie. Two very different mysteries, each with its own set of multiple deaths and unhappy endings.

"Crooked House" describes a family of unique characters who all became suspects after the recent murder of the head of their family. Whereas many other murder mysteries focus on clues as to the mechanisms of the crime, this one had greater focus on the personalities -- who among this mix best matches the personality profile of a typical murderer? The solution was one I did not suspect because it was the one character I did not wish to become the killer. Agatha Christie created a real monster for this novel. Still, this was a fun novel with lots of twists and diversions all the way to the end.

"Endless Night" is a much slower paced novel with even greater detail in personalities and character development. It's particular slow paced in that the murders did not happen until 2/3 the way through the novel. Unlike typical murder mysteries where the narrator learned about the backgrounds of each suspect after the murder has happened, here the reader learn about all the personalities and are kept anxious to see who would commit the murder. It did not help that the story was being told by an unreliable narrator, although the technique seem better employed in this novel than "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd". The most fun part about this novel is finding all places where there were suspicious discontinuities because random clues suddenly appeared.

The common link between these books is that I read them on the same business trip. The last Agatha Christie book I read was during a business trip and the ones before that was another business trip. Eventually I will get through my stack of Agatha Christie books if I travel enough, except maybe I will never bring with one titled "Murder is Easy" on airplanes.


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