Peril at End House / Agatha Christie

 

4 out of 5 stars

It is amazing to me how much Agatha Christie could do in a book with less than 200 pages! Mind you, we are already acquainted with M. Poirot and Arthur Hastings at this point, but still, she gives us such vivid portrayals so compactly. Rather than writing long descriptions, she sketches quick characters and sets them in motion and lets the reader fill in the blanks from there.

Christie had really hit her stride as a mystery writer by this novel. There's no fooling around with international crime rings or illicit spies. Instead, she devotes her attention to producing an ingenious who dunnit. She fools me more often than not and this book was no exception to that rule. I was as in the dark as Hastings until the final pages. That's one of the things that I so enjoy about her work, truly. So many authors who write longer books telegraph their solutions so early in the work that there's no surprise left. (There's one author that my gentleman friend loves, but I can't stand because I know the murderer by chapter 2 at the latest.)

I'm just as guilty as Hastings this time out, being far too trusting. Which is kind of funny as one of my sisters accuses me regularly of being far too suspicious of people. While I consider her to be naively accepting. Life doesn't always reflect art, I guess.

Short but satisfying.