Tag: Time

Agatha Christie – The Hollow | Review

Title: The Hollow

Author: Agatha Christie

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 3.5/5

This is pretty much just your bog standard Agatha Christie book, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also one of those books that, for me at least, is more about establishing a sense of place and time than it is about someone solving a murder mystery.

This is also a Hercule Poirot book, although the detective doesn’t necessarily get too much page time. For me, that’s no bad thing, as Poirot can be a little insufferable at times and so he’s generally best in moderation.

This was also a cracking little piece because of its dialogue, which made me chuckle quite a lot. It’s unusual for me to actually laugh out loud when reading a book, but it happened here and took me by surprise. Sure, the mystery itself isn’t one of Christie’s most gripping, but the dialogue and the setting more than make up for that.

Overall, I’d say that this is a decent enough Agatha Christie book, but it’s pretty mid-tier when you compare it to some of her big hitters. It’s worth a read and I would recommend it, but not for your first foray into her work. It’s more one for completionists or people who are reading the whole Poirot series.

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Louise Candlish – The Other Passenger | Review

Title: The Other Passenger

Author: Louise Candlish

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 411

Rating: 4/5

I was sent a signed copy of this book for free as part of a bookish subscription box that reached out to me, but I don’t think that will influence my review. Still, I guess that’s a disclaimer for you.

The theme of the box that I received was all about the commute and this was pretty much the perfect book for it because it was mostly set on the commuter boats that people take to get into the city. As for the genre, it’s basically as close to generic contemporary thriller as you can get, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We have a lot of the classics tropes here, from an unreliable narrator to tons of twists and turns, complex interpersonal relationships and of course that little technique of jumping backwards and forwards through time to advance what’s happening in the present by bringing up something that happened in the past and which changes the way we look at things.

Other than that, I don’t really want to say too much about the plot, purely because as with most of these, half of the point is being taken by surprise. And I will say that while there were one or two things that I called pretty early on, there were also a couple of twists here and there that I didn’t spot.

It probably also helped that I received quite a nice edition of this, a hardback with the author’s signature in it, and so it was quite an aesthetically pleasing read, too. I can’t say that I’m the biggest fan of thrillers in general, as I tend to prefer either cosy mysteries, private detectives or gritty police procedural novels, but it certainly did the job and was a pleasant enough read, keeping me going until the end to find out the truth about what happened.

And that brings us on to the question of whether I’d recommend it or not, and that really depends upon the type of reader that you are. If you’re really into modern thrillers and you loved Gone Girl and Girl on the Train, you’re probably going to like this one. There are a ton of twists, more than I’ve seen in a novel of this size in quite a long time, and the characters are just warped enough to keep them interesting.

Learn more about The Other Passenger.