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Agatha Christie – Taken at the Flood | Review

Title: Taken at the Flood

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 192

Rating: 3.5/5

This was just okay but not great, although I always say that even Agatha Christie at her worst is better than most at their best. I think the issue here is that she did her usual thing of not introducing Poirot until towards the end of the story, and that only works if the story and the characters have got you hooked. Here, they unfortunately didn’t.

I did enjoy reading it though, I just can’t say that I enjoyed it as much as the other Christie books that I’ve read, and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re a seasoned fan. It’s one of the few times that I’ve been reading a Christie novel and asking myself when it was going to end because I wanted to hurry up and move on to something else.

So yeah, there’s my take on Taken at the Flood, although you should take it with a pinch of salt. Some people like some Christie books and some people like others. So there you have it.

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Agatha Christie – The Secret of Chimneys | Review

Title: The Secret of Chimneys

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 310

Rating: 3/5

This one’s a bit of a strange one because there aren’t any of Christie’s iconic characters for us to enjoy and it’s arguably more of an espionage thriller than a classic cosy mystery. That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing here to like, but it does mean that if you’re expecting some classic cosy crime then you’re probably going to be disappointed.

I think my favourite thing about this book was probably the old lady who’d lived a blameless life and who ended up being blackmailed by someone. She realised that the blackmailer had got the wrong person, but she decided to play along anyway, even giving him some money, which she would otherwise have spent on a dress. She just wanted a little bit of excitement in her life, and fair play to her.

From there, someone gets murdered, and then we kind of slowly move on from there. The pacing is pretty good and the overall plot itself works out, it’s just that it’s nowhere near as gripping as some of Christie’s other work and so it feels relatively disappointing as a consequence. It’s definitely something that you’re only going to want to read if you’re a completionist like I am, or if you’re lucky enough to get a copy of the facsimile edition without paying, like I did.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got for you here. I guess the only other thing that I’d mention is that one of the characters speaks like Poirot does, using English but sprinkling in random bits of French here and there. I feel as though Christie was just keeping herself in practice there and it didn’t really work so well. You see, not everything she touched turned to gold.

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