Tag: Forgettable

Agatha Christie – Third Girl | Review

July 2, 2020
Authors A-E (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Third Girl

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.75/5

This book was fun, the first Christie novel that I’ve picked up for a little while now and really just the ticket considering Ariadne Oliver is one of my favourite of Christie’s characters. It also has the kind of setup that I like, where the main witness to the crime doesn’t really know what it was that she saw.

The only thing that I would say is that this one is just pretty competent. There’s a reason why I’ve never really seen anyone talk about it, why I hadn’t come across it in a charity shop and why it took me so long to finally end up with a copy.

So would I recommend it? Yeah, probably. It’s a good little addition to the Poirot series and features the old detective as an older man, to the point at which the story almost doesn’t happen because someone thinks he’s too old to be able to help them out.

The only real problem is that it doesn’t excel in any way. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that Ariadne Oliver is in it, it would mostly be forgettable, but Mrs Oliver is so cool that I’m always happy whenever she shows up in a story.

Learn more about Third Girl.

Thomas Harris – Black Sunday | Review

May 29, 2020
Authors F-J (By Surname)Fiction

Title: Black Sunday

Author: Thomas Harris

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 320

Rating: 2.75/5

I was expecting good things from this, purely because I’ve read the Hannibal novels and so it had a lot to live up to. In fact, as far as I’m aware, this was the only Thomas Harris novel that I hadn’t read other than his most recent one.

This one was actually published way back in 1975 when Harris was in his thirties, and I have to say that it shows. He attempted to write a sort of fast-paced political thriller, but it doesn’t really work so well when you compare it to some of the newer novels to have hit the market in the last twenty years.

There’s also the fact that this deals with terrorism but was written over a quarter of a century before 9/11. Some of the stuff that he wrote is still relevant, but a lot of it has been superseded by events, and it definitely feels like a product of its time. The writing isn’t particularly good either, and nor is the plotting. In fact, it just comes across as a pretty generic book, something pretty forgettable as far as I’m concerned.

There is a saving grace though, and that’s the complex antagonist with his Vietnam flashbacks and his plot to blow up the Superbowl using an explosive-laden blimp. In fact, I’m kind of surprised that it was so dull considering the subject matter. It could have been awesome. It just wasn’t.

I’m not sure that I’d say that it’s a bad novel either, I just think that it’s very much a product of the time it was written and published in. I think it would have been good enough at the time, but I don’t think there’s much point reading it now. I would have given up if I hadn’t already read Harris’ other stuff.

Learn more about Black Sunday.