Title: Dumb Witness
Author: Agatha Christie
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 416
Rating 3.75/5
This was a pretty fun little Agatha Christie mystery, although I will also admit that my attention started to wander in a few places and so by the time that I got to the end, I’d lost all of the different threads and couldn’t really make a guess at what had happened. But with Christie, that’s almost not the point for me anyway – the journey is just as much fun as discovering the destination.
In this one, an old lady has a fall down some stairs, changes her will as she’s recovering and then dies soon afterwards. Of course, Hercule Poirot happens to be on hand and ends up poking his beaky little nose into things, and even though the doctor swears blindly that she died of liver disease, Poirot thinks otherwise. Of course, there’s always a chance that the doctor’s involved, too…
This book has everything that I’ve grown to know and love about Agatha Christie, and I really don’t think I can fault it other than the fact that it’s missing that vital little spark that turns an Agatha Christie novel into an Agatha Christie classic. It’s not too far off the mark though, and I also think it’s pretty accessible and not a bad place to start if you’re new to Hercule Poirot.
Of course, I’m not such a fan of Hercule Poirot as opposed to Miss Marple, and I’ve always found him a little annoying to read about. Here, though, he was bearable, and even though this copy of the book was over 400 pages long, it only took me a couple of days to whizz through it. It probably helped that I had a beautiful Harper Collins edition of it too.
There’s not too much more that I can say about this one, because it’s pretty bog standard for Christie and just what I’ve come to expect from her in the first place. It’s the kind of book where if you see it in a charity shop and you can pick it up cheap, I say go for it. It’s not a bad little introduction to Christie and her style, and it would work just as well as a standalone as any of her other novels.
All in all then, a pretty successful read and just what the doctor ordered. I like to read Christie books as palette cleansers. Hurray!
