Sad Cypress
Agatha Christie
Harper. First published 1940
About halfway through the book, I realized I not only had read this book before, but remembered the 'solution', too. After that there was no suspense, of course, but I could observe and enjoy Christie's technique. Basically there a lot of misdirection. Many characters are presented, some of them with even stronger motives for the murder that the actual villain, who also is not hidden, but shown to have equally good opportunity to carry out the deed as any of the others. In the denouement, one character after another is presented as the murderer, until the truth is revealed a few pages before the end of the book. There is that is a problem with these books of course, their lengths. We know, by meta analysis, that the solution presented by the author in the middle of the book cannot be the correct one - else why does the book go on for so many more pages? Christie, and other crime novelists, grapple with this problem by filling the novel with social commentary, politics, psychological studies, humour or action. Anyway that is what makes these novels, and not just puzzles.
In this book, Poirot is called upon to, somehow or the other, even dishonestly, prevent the conviction of the prime suspect, a young woman of a very attractive and sympathetic character against whom the evidence is very strong. The resolution of the suspense, which takes place in court at the trial, is reasonably satisfactory, though not one of Christie's best - no 'The Murder on the Orient Express', this. The social commentary and characterisation of very typical English characters, usually Christie's forte, is rather weak here. Nevertheless, I had no trouble reading it to the end. I enjoyed it, in fact.
About halfway through the book, I realized I not only had read this book before, but remembered the 'solution', too. After that there was no suspense, of course, but I could observe and enjoy Christie's technique. Basically there a lot of misdirection. Many characters are presented, some of them with even stronger motives for the murder that the actual villain, who also is not hidden, but shown to have equally good opportunity to carry out the deed as any of the others. In the denouement, one character after another is presented as the murderer, until the truth is revealed a few pages before the end of the book. There is that is a problem with these books of course, their lengths. We know, by meta analysis, that the solution presented by the author in the middle of the book cannot be the correct one - else why does the book go on for so many more pages? Christie, and other crime novelists, grapple with this problem by filling the novel with social commentary, politics, psychological studies, humour or action. Anyway that is what makes these novels, and not just puzzles.
In this book, Poirot is called upon to, somehow or the other, even dishonestly, prevent the conviction of the prime suspect, a young woman of a very attractive and sympathetic character against whom the evidence is very strong. The resolution of the suspense, which takes place in court at the trial, is reasonably satisfactory, though not one of Christie's best - no 'The Murder on the Orient Express', this. The social commentary and characterisation of very typical English characters, usually Christie's forte, is rather weak here. Nevertheless, I had no trouble reading it to the end. I enjoyed it, in fact.
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