Title: Hickory Dickory Dock
Author: Agatha Christie
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 304
Rating 4.5/5
Hurray, I was pretty pleased with this one and thought that it read like Agatha Christie at her best. I think just a few of the reasons that I enjoyed it include the fact that Poirot wasn’t actually in it too much and that while it does have a nursery rhyme inspired title, the story line itself wasn’t bent too out of shape to reflect it.
There’s also the fact that this involves international smuggling as well as murder, and while I was definitely involved with the story, I couldn’t guess who the murderer was. Then, when the solution was revealed, I was amazed by how obvious it was. What more can you ask for from a murder mystery?
The setting of this was great as well, and so were the characters. In fact, they both jumped out of the page, and that’s kind of rare to happen with Agatha Christie. I’m not throwing shade or anything like that, it’s just that I tend to find that it’s usually one or the other stands out in the majority of Christie’s work. In At Bertram’s Hotel, for example, it’s all about the setting. And in any book featuring Ariadne Oliver, it’s all about Ariadne.
I don’t think there’s too much more for me to say, really. If you’re new to Christie and you come across this one then it’s as good as any other to start with. And if you’re a seasoned Christie reader but you haven’t got to this one yet, you need to hurry up. It’s even interesting because of the way that what’s going in the book relates back to the period in which it was written. Pretty cool.
