Reputedly one of Christie's favourites among her novels. I tried to keep this in mind as I read it. I found it very unlike her previous books. It deals with an working class young man who marries a very wealthy young woman. He has no idea how much she is worth until they have eloped and he must start meeting the relatives. The money doesn't seem to have motivated Michael Rogers to court Fenella Guteman, but it certainly doesn't detract from her allure. He quickly realizes that her people will view him as a fortune hunter and he feels understandably hostile. Her relatives and business people hover around her in a most annoying way.
In actual fact, I didn't like Michael from the very first. I thought Christie gave him reasonable concerns and reactions, but I just couldn't warm, up to him. And I couldn't put my finger on why I felt that way. I kept wondering why he made me so uncomfortable. The story is told from his point of view, which usually invests me as a reader in his version of events. He was living a charmed life, but I didn't feel pleased for him.
Christie was an enthusiastic home buyer. It seemed to me when reading her biography that she did quite a bit of wheeling and dealing in real estate. She was also better off financially than her second husband, often contributing funds to his archaeological digs. Both of these aspects of her life may have provided grist for Endless Night. She was in her late 70s when this book was published and obviously still very much in control of her faculties. Not only in control, but creative, writing a plot that would be at home among today's psychological thrillers.
Truly, Dame Agatha set the patterns for modern mysteries.
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