Tag: Good

Agatha Christie – Witness for the Prosecution | Review

Title: Witness for the Prosecution

Author: Agatha Christie

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 288

Rating: 4/5

This collection brings together a bunch of Agatha Christie’s short stories, including the title story here, which I’ve also seen performed as a stage play. It was excellent as a play, and it was equally excellent as a story, even when I was consuming it for a second time. Better yet, it’s also bundled in with a bunch of other pretty good reads, although none of them quite stand out like Witness for the Prosecution.

Some people find that Christie’s short stories aren’t quite as good as her books are, while others argue it’s the other way round. Personally, I’d say that it depends, but I do think that a few of her short stories are her best pieces, especially if you go and read Miss Marple’s Final Cases, which was a masterpiece.

Here, some stories are great and some are just good, which is pretty much what I expect from any given collection by any given author. Overall, though, it’s on the stronger side, and definitely one that’s worth picking up. In fact, if you’re new to Agatha Christie, you could do a lot worse than to go and watch Witness for the Prosecution in the theatre and then to pick up the book so you can read it.

For me, this book worked effectively as a re-read, because I’d already read all of the stories that were within it from other sources. In fact, I whizzed through it so quickly, mostly just re-reading the stories that interested me the most, that I forgot to post a review. So I had to catch back up.

Learn more about Witness for the Prosecution.


Agatha Christie – Towards Zero | Review

Title: Towards Zero

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 3.25/5

This book is one of Christie’s Inspector Battle books, and I’ve always found them to be a little weaker than the Marple and Poirot books, as well as just her general standalones. Unfortunately, Battle just isn’t a particularly gripping character, and so when he’s front and centre in one of Christie’s books, it’s a bit of a struggle.

I think part of the problem here was that the mystery itself also wasn’t particularly interesting, and so that left me just reading for the sake of reading even though the story and the characters were of only passing interest. I mean, it’s still alright, just not great.

Still, I should caveat this with what I always say about Agatha Christie, which is that even a bad Agatha Christie book is better than a good book by most other authors. It’s just a shame that I left this one until towards the end, because I was kind of hoping to go out on a high. And now I only have two more of her books left.

Learn more about Towards Zero.