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lonemagpieI actually intended to read The Mysterious Affair At Styles because it was published 100 years ago come October, but it turned out the earliest Poirot novel on my shelves is this second one, from 1923.
As luck would have it, it’s one of my favourite Poirots anyway, written in a brisk and light way, based on a real murder case, and set up as a deliberate ‘Poirot is a better detective than Holmes because,’ riff, with Surete detective Giraud in the Holmes role. It’s a book of its time, told mostly in dialogue, with little sense of place or location – of course at the time readers would know what the Calais steamer or a French holiday villa was like, with no need of atmospheric description – but keeping hold and flowing cleverly and with speed.
Reading it post-Suchet is quite astonishing, as Poirot and Hastings – always the best narrator for him – are so clearly Suchet and Fraser that you an’t help wondering a] how the hell enybody else – especially Ustinov – was ever accepted in the role, and b] where Christie got the time machine so that she could base the characters on their performances. I mean, seriously, it’s fucking supernatural…
Anyway, yeah, a really enjoyable read, as you might expect from a pre-War Christie.
As luck would have it, it’s one of my favourite Poirots anyway, written in a brisk and light way, based on a real murder case, and set up as a deliberate ‘Poirot is a better detective than Holmes because,’ riff, with Surete detective Giraud in the Holmes role. It’s a book of its time, told mostly in dialogue, with little sense of place or location – of course at the time readers would know what the Calais steamer or a French holiday villa was like, with no need of atmospheric description – but keeping hold and flowing cleverly and with speed.
Reading it post-Suchet is quite astonishing, as Poirot and Hastings – always the best narrator for him – are so clearly Suchet and Fraser that you an’t help wondering a] how the hell enybody else – especially Ustinov – was ever accepted in the role, and b] where Christie got the time machine so that she could base the characters on their performances. I mean, seriously, it’s fucking supernatural…
Anyway, yeah, a really enjoyable read, as you might expect from a pre-War Christie.
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Date: 2020-04-10 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-11 08:22 am (UTC)Having also listened to some of the abridged audiobooks read by Hugh Fraser, he is the perfect person to read them. So much so I hunted down some of the unabridged versions, plus his reading of The Mysterious Mr Quin.