Title: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Author: Agatha Christie
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 280
Rating 3.5/5
I wasn’t particularly interested in this book to begin with, in part because it took a while for the build up to be over and for the story proper to begin. Once it did, though, I was pretty hooked – and that’s particularly impressive because I much prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot.
In this book, a family gathers for Christmas, but then they start to dredge up secrets from the past, old resentments and all of the usual stuff that you might expect for a murder mystery set at Christmas. It’s not super festive though, and I read it in the middle of June without it feeling weird. Sure, the book is separated into a few different days that take place over the festive period, but the holiday season is really just the backdrop rather than the whole point of the story.
We also get a safe full of uncut diamonds and an old man threatening to change his will in front of a family who doesn’t like him much but who rely upon him for money. One of the sons is frugal enough, but his wife has expensive tastes. There are even rumours that there might be some bastard children that none of the other family members know about.
So in other words, it’s all the good stuff that Agatha Christie is known and loved for, and this is really quite a typical book for her. There might not be a huge amount of innovation, but it’s fun and certainly worth reading. So there you go.
