Quick Review

Crooked House by Agatha Christie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Christie herself said, more than once, that she enjoyed most writing books without her major characters.  Perfectly understandable, as the precedent was already there with Conan Doyle; no one wants to do the same trick with every hand.  Here, unencumbered by any of the little Belgian's baggage, or the need for a spinster's extended stay, the novelist wastes little time on the placement of the narrator, as it were, in the soup. The son of the police inspector, affianced to the granddaughter of the murdered old gentleman, you see?  And, we're in.  Simplicity itself.  Works a dream, too. Inoffensive fellow, not stupid, but not too many "little grey cells" smugly ratiocinating away ahead of us.  The point made so well here is how unimportant such a one actually is to Christie's business.

She's made a devilish good puzzle here -- and who would expect less?  -- but even that is less source of her real delight than just the comedy of an ill-assorted, if largely loving family, suffering the very English embarrassment of, how to put it?  A spot of murder?  Seems someone's done in the old man.  Horrible, nasty sort of crime, poisoning. The twist being everyone, or nearly so, genuinely loved the old darling, honest.  Her murder and her premise established, Christie parades the suspects to and fro, their faults and foolishness most acidly and amusingly described; from silly women to their sillier husbands, a noble old spinster, a noble old nanny, etc.  Best of all, and a particular favourite of Christie's, a truly funny, truly awful little girl.  It's all good, bloody fun.

The final twist and the inevitable reveal all satisfy mightily, as does the comfortingly just conclusion.  (I do wonder now but what left to her own devices and not answerable to her public and her publishers, Christie would not have been happier, and more respectable as a modern artist, had her confinement to genre not insisted on something like justice.  Often the only false note for me now, reading her again in middle age.  I suspect she knew enough not only of life but of actual crime to disbelieve in such finality, but I suppose I may be wrong, or in any case we're not to know.  Perfectly respectable, damn her, was dear, old Dame Agatha.)

This one will certainly set me off in search of other holidays from her detectives.



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