Rating: 2/5
Review:
Disappointing
It seems a lèse-majesté to give an Agatha Christie book only two stars, but although this started well, I’m afraid I found it pretty poor overall.
Murder Is Easy is effectively a stand-alone mystery. It is listed as a Superintendent Battle book, but Battle himself appears only as a minor character in the last couple of chapters. The protagonist is Luke Fitzwilliam, a police officer returning from the Malay Straits, who meets an elderly lady on the train. She hints at a mass murderer working in the small village of Wychwood under Ashe and Luke ends up going there under cover to try to solve the mystery.
So far, so good, but I found what followed disappointing; unconvincing characters, a wholly chichéd romance and some extremely unlikely events. These included some convenient and implausible coincidences, Luke’s clumsy investigations, which people responded to with open frankness when they would in reality have clammed up and told him to mind his own business, and some unpleasant attitudes to some of the working people. For example, a difficult young man has been killed and Luke dismisses the grief of his sneeringly painted, working-class mother by referring to his five siblings with the contemptuous, “I gather she has five blessings left to console her.”
There are some decent red herrings, but there is also an awful lot of ponderous discussion of likelihoods and possibilities and frankly, I got rather fed up with it and skimmed in places. The denouement is pretty silly and overall I was left wondering why I had bothered.
Agatha Christie wrote some very fine, enjoyable mysteries, but this isn’t one of them, I’m afraid, and I can’t recommend it.
Murder Is Easy is effectively a stand-alone mystery. It is listed as a Superintendent Battle book, but Battle himself appears only as a minor character in the last couple of chapters. The protagonist is Luke Fitzwilliam, a police officer returning from the Malay Straits, who meets an elderly lady on the train. She hints at a mass murderer working in the small village of Wychwood under Ashe and Luke ends up going there under cover to try to solve the mystery.
So far, so good, but I found what followed disappointing; unconvincing characters, a wholly chichéd romance and some extremely unlikely events. These included some convenient and implausible coincidences, Luke’s clumsy investigations, which people responded to with open frankness when they would in reality have clammed up and told him to mind his own business, and some unpleasant attitudes to some of the working people. For example, a difficult young man has been killed and Luke dismisses the grief of his sneeringly painted, working-class mother by referring to his five siblings with the contemptuous, “I gather she has five blessings left to console her.”
There are some decent red herrings, but there is also an awful lot of ponderous discussion of likelihoods and possibilities and frankly, I got rather fed up with it and skimmed in places. The denouement is pretty silly and overall I was left wondering why I had bothered.
Agatha Christie wrote some very fine, enjoyable mysteries, but this isn’t one of them, I’m afraid, and I can’t recommend it.
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