And Then There Were None
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (Agatha Christie) - Three Stars
Between the move and everything, my brain has been in "shut-down" mode and not really ready to tackle anything intellectually demanding. Agatha Christie is a good way to ease back in, because her stories are interesting, entertaining, and short.
They're also impossible to review, since to talk about the story at all would be to give something away. Mrs. Mallowan's habit of italicizing every dramatic revelation is charming (I had to keep reminding myself that most of the murder mystery cliches started with Agatha Christie). The book was good, but not as good as Murder on the Orient Express, the best of her stories that I've read.
The epilogue cleared up a lot, per usual. Christie was brilliant in that her stories are always feasible (fantastic, maybe, but not implausible) and she never has to resort to crappy deus ex machina endings (teeny, tiny, mini-spoiler: this means that, yes, one of the ten on the island is the murderer). But I will say I had trouble with the last two deaths. If you haven't read the book, don't highlight this next section:
The last two deaths are Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne, and their final scene together struck a wrong note for me. Lombard had been painted as an unscrupulous, mercenary type figure. If, at the end, he knew he wasn't the murderer, he would automatically assume Vera was: why didn't he just shoot her and be done with it? Then there's this exchange: Vera said, "How was it worked--that trick with the marble bear?" He shrugged his shoulders. "A conjuring trick, my dear--a very good one..." Now, if you've read the book, you know that neither of these two were the murderer. Why does Lombard's response sound like a confession to a murder he didn't commit? If he suspected Vera as the murderer, why was he answering as to how SHE committed the murder? To wrap up the Lombard puzzle, I find it incredible that he could be so guileless as to let her lift the gun from his pocket and kill him.
Lastly, Vera's death. While Christie (rather heavy-handedly) elaborated on Vera's guilty conscience, her "suicide" comes FAR too quickly after she shoots Lombard and (for all intents and purposes) "wins" as the last survivor.
Between the move and everything, my brain has been in "shut-down" mode and not really ready to tackle anything intellectually demanding. Agatha Christie is a good way to ease back in, because her stories are interesting, entertaining, and short.
They're also impossible to review, since to talk about the story at all would be to give something away. Mrs. Mallowan's habit of italicizing every dramatic revelation is charming (I had to keep reminding myself that most of the murder mystery cliches started with Agatha Christie). The book was good, but not as good as Murder on the Orient Express, the best of her stories that I've read.
The epilogue cleared up a lot, per usual. Christie was brilliant in that her stories are always feasible (fantastic, maybe, but not implausible) and she never has to resort to crappy deus ex machina endings (teeny, tiny, mini-spoiler: this means that, yes, one of the ten on the island is the murderer). But I will say I had trouble with the last two deaths. If you haven't read the book, don't highlight this next section:
The last two deaths are Philip Lombard and Vera Claythorne, and their final scene together struck a wrong note for me. Lombard had been painted as an unscrupulous, mercenary type figure. If, at the end, he knew he wasn't the murderer, he would automatically assume Vera was: why didn't he just shoot her and be done with it? Then there's this exchange: Vera said, "How was it worked--that trick with the marble bear?" He shrugged his shoulders. "A conjuring trick, my dear--a very good one..." Now, if you've read the book, you know that neither of these two were the murderer. Why does Lombard's response sound like a confession to a murder he didn't commit? If he suspected Vera as the murderer, why was he answering as to how SHE committed the murder? To wrap up the Lombard puzzle, I find it incredible that he could be so guileless as to let her lift the gun from his pocket and kill him.
Lastly, Vera's death. While Christie (rather heavy-handedly) elaborated on Vera's guilty conscience, her "suicide" comes FAR too quickly after she shoots Lombard and (for all intents and purposes) "wins" as the last survivor.
posted by Kevin at 10:21 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home