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Mrs. McGinty's Dead

(Hercule Poirot #30)

Agatha Christie,

Hugh Fraser (Narrator)

3.83 · Rating details · 15,957 ratings · 701 reviews

Mrs. McGinty is dead and everyone suspects James Bentley, her slightly shifty lodger, but Superintendent Spence is suspicious enough to ask for Hercule Poirot's assistance. Soon, the seemingly simple situation turns into a complex web of lies and hidden identities. Unabridged. 5 CDs.

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Audio CD, 244 pages

Published April 12th 2007 by AudioGO (first published February 1952)

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Feb 24, 2015 carol. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, should-buy

Alas, Mrs. McGinty; we hardly knew you.

Really. I mean that. She was a widow, a woman who cleaned houses and took in lodgers to make ends meet; had a niece whom she saw at holidays, and was perhaps a bit of a nosy parker; nothing extraordinary to fill the obituary. When Inspector Spence visits the retired Poirot, he shares his troubling concern that the man he arrested for murdering Mrs. McGinty, and who is now facing the death penalty, is not truly guilty. Yes, yes; the circumstantial evidence w
Alas, Mrs. McGinty; we hardly knew you.

Really. I mean that. She was a widow, a woman who cleaned houses and took in lodgers to make ends meet; had a niece whom she saw at holidays, and was perhaps a bit of a nosy parker; nothing extraordinary to fill the obituary. When Inspector Spence visits the retired Poirot, he shares his troubling concern that the man he arrested for murdering Mrs. McGinty, and who is now facing the death penalty, is not truly guilty. Yes, yes; the circumstantial evidence was damning, but James Bentley’s milquetoast personality seems so wrong for the deed. Could dear Poirot perhaps put his little grey cells to work? But the clues won’t be found in McGinty’s past; as Hercule Poirot points out “For, you see, Mon cher Spence, if Mrs. McGinty is just an ordinary charwoman–it is the murderer who must be extraordinary.”

It is true; the murderer is a bit extraordinary. The plotting has an interesting premise, albeit perhaps hard to understand in the modern age. A second murder (because there always is one, isn’t there?) was unsurprising. Overall, the book reminded me more than a bit of A Murder Is Announced, so perhaps take a break between if you are on a Christie binge, or perhaps visit one of her more exotic locales in between.

For once, Christie leads with Hercule instead of consulting him later, providing an enjoyable stroll down nostalgia lane. Poirot laments the loss of Hastings as a sounding board and audience, but since Poirot’s investigative strategy is to stir up the village, he ends up ‘confiding’ in a number of people. We are treated to Christie’s standard cast of the post-war English village: a penniless but connected couple with a shabby family manse, a overly dramatic woman who enjoys her own tales of woe, the dutiful but repressed daughter, a bold young woman emblematic of the new age, an insecure, unsmart woman attempting to climb the social ladder, a postmistress with a penchant for gossip. All standard in many Christies, along with the semi-invalid elderly woman and her playwright son, echoes of Marple’s nephew Raymond.

“Mrs. Sweetiman imparted all this information with relish. She prided herself on being well informed. Mrs. Weatherby whose desire for knitting needles had perhaps been prompted by a desire to know what was going on, paid for her purchase.“

Tone seems on the playful side, which self-referential remarks on writing, appreciation and performance. When Mrs. Oliver and her apples make an appearance, it becomes quite clear that Christie is taking an authorial aside to muse on readers who obstinately prefer troublesome characters and playwrights who take license with an author’s characters. “‘How do I know?’ said Mrs. Oliver crossly. ‘How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad!… Why all the idiotic mannerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something–and people seem to like it–and then you go on–and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life.”

Poor Dame Christie. She seems to have had at least a gastronomic sort of revenge on Poirot at least, by boarding him at the worst guest-house possible: "I thought I would open a bottle of those raspberries I put up last summer. They seem to have a bit of mould on top but they say nowadays that that doesn't matter... --practically penicillin." If it is any post-humous consolation, in my old age, I prefer Miss Marple to the conceited Poirot, but I enjoy them both. Mrs. McGinty's Dead is one worth adding to the library.

Three and a half self-referential stars. ...more

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Nov 19, 2013 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, crime-mystery, fiction, british, literature

Mrs. McGinty's Dead (Hercule Poirot, #28), Agatha Christie
Mrs. McGinty's Dead is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1952 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 3 March the same year. An old woman apparently struck dead by her lodger for thirty pounds that she kept under a floorboard. When, however, he is asked by the investigating officer to take another look at the case to stop an innocent man going to the gallows, ...more

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Jan 18, 2017 BrokenTune rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

‘I should, perhaps, madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.’
The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.
‘What a lovely name,’ she said kindly. ‘Greek, isn’t it?’

Now this is a Poirot novel that strays from the script a bit. It's fascinating but there seem to be three parts to this novel and the crime/mystery part is the weakest one. Yet, I really liked the book because first and foremost, Christie made me laugh out loud quite a few times.

Eh bien, let's start with the we ‘I should, perhaps, madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.’
The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.
‘What a lovely name,’ she said kindly. ‘Greek, isn’t it?’

Now this is a Poirot novel that strays from the script a bit. It's fascinating but there seem to be three parts to this novel and the crime/mystery part is the weakest one. Yet, I really liked the book because first and foremost, Christie made me laugh out loud quite a few times.

Eh bien, let's start with the weakest part - the crime/mystery:

So, Mrs. McGinty is found dead and her lodger has been arrested, is standing trial, and will probably be sentenced to hang, but ... Superintendent Spence is having doubts and is consulting an old acquaintance to have a look at the case.

‘I don’t know what you’ll go there as,’ continued Spence doubtfully as he eyed Poirot. ‘You might be some kind of an opera singer. Voice broken down. Got to rest. That might do.’
‘I shall go,’ said Hercule Poirot, speaking with accents of royal blood, ‘as myself.’
Spence received this pronouncement with pursed lips. ‘D’you think that’s advisable?’

From there on, the typical sleuthing adventure ensues, except that there are a lot - and I do mean way too many - characters that are part of the investigation, a few red herrings, Ariadne Oliver - whose involvement in the book has less to do with the plot (I'll get to that later) -, and an ending that seems to have been rather far-fetched.

In fact, by the time the mystery was resolved, I had kinda lost interest in the whodunit part and really enjoyed the characters interacting with each other.

This book is really not about the mystery, which, in my opinion, was rather sub-par. No rather, the book seems to have been a self-reverential celebration of all things Poirot. And this may or may not be to readers tastes. I quite liked it in this case.

We have a lot of details about Poirot himself:

In his early days, he had seen plenty of crude brutality. It had been more the rule than the exception. He found it fatiguing, and unintelligent.
---
My work has enslaved me just as their work enslaves them. When the hour of leisure arrives, they have nothing with which to fill their leisure.

We have a couple of tips of the hat to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which was published 25(!) years before Mrs. McGintys Dead, when Poirot discussed gardening with Spence:

Me, once I decided to live in the country and grow vegetable marrows. It did not succeed. I have not the temperament.’

In many of the details that describe Poirot in this book, Christie seems to take a retrospective stance, It serves as a celebration of his previous adventures, but I also could not help feeling that Christie took the opportunity to have some fun herself and poke her famous character at every opportunity. Not only, does she send Poirot to the country - and we all know how much Poirot hates the country -

It’s not really a Guest House, just a rather decrepit country house where the young couple who own it take in paying guests. I don’t think,’ said Spence dubiously, ‘that it’s very comfortable.’
Hercule Poirot closed his eyes in agony. ‘If I suffer, I suffer,’ he said. ‘It has to be.’

And Christie makes sure of it his suffering. This was one of my favourite parts and I am sure anyone who has ever been exasperated by Poirot's eccentricities would chuckle about the following scene of Poirot taking up lodgings at a country inn:

The room was large, and had a faded Morris wall-paper. Steel engravings of unpleasant subjects hung crookedly on the walls with one or two good oil paintings. The chair-covers were both faded and dirty, the carpet had holes in it and had never been of a pleasant design. A good deal of miscellaneous bric-à-brac was scattered haphazard here and there. Tables rocked dangerously owing to absence of castors. One window was open, and no power on earth could, apparently, shut it again. The door, temporarily shut, was not likely to remain so. The latch did not hold, and with every gust of wind it burst open and whirling gusts of cold wind eddied round the room.

‘I suffer,’ said Hercule Poirot to himself in acute self-pity. ‘Yes, I suffer.’

The door burst open and the wind and Mrs Summerhayes came in together. She looked round the room, shouted ‘What?’ to someone in the distance and went out again.
Mrs Summerhayes had red hair and an attractively freckled face and was usually in a distracted state of putting things down, or else looking for them.
Hercule Poirot sprang to his feet and shut the door.
A moment or two later it opened again and Mrs Summerhayes reappeared. This time she was carrying a large enamel basin and a knife.

A man’s voice from some way away called out: ‘Maureen, that cat’s been sick again. What shall I do?’
Mrs Summerhayes called: ‘I’m coming, darling. Hold everything.’ She dropped the basin and the knife and went out again.
Poirot got up again and shut the door. He said: ‘Decidedly, I suffer.’

As I said I really enjoyed this part of the story but I did keep wondering why Christie took to treating Poirot in such a way. Was it to celebrate him or was she falling out with him as a character that had become so famous that he had a life of his own - just as Arthur Conan Doyle fell out with Holmes?

Which brings me to the third part - Ariadne Oliver. Ariadne is basically Christie's way of injecting a fictionalised version of herself into the Poirot stories, and in this one Ariadne enters the scene - nearly knocking Poirot over with her car - and spends a lot of time agonising over how her own fictional creation - Sven Hjerson - is being changed inappropriately by theatre and film producers.

Robin continued blithely: ‘What I feel is, here’s that wonderful young man, parachuted down—’
Mrs Oliver interrupted: ‘He’s sixty.’
‘Oh no!’
‘He is.’
‘I don’t see him like that. Thirty-five— not a day older.’
‘But I’ve been writing books about him for thirty years, and he was at least thirty-five in the first one.’
‘But, darling, if he’s sixty, you can’t have the tension between him and the girl— what’s her name? Ingrid. I mean, it would make him just a nasty old man!’
‘It certainly would.’
‘So you see, he must be thirty-five,’ said Robin triumphantly.
‘Then he can’t be Sven Hjerson. Just make him a Norwegian young man who’s in the Resistance Movement.’
‘But darling Ariadne, the whole point of the play is Sven Hjerson. You’ve got an enormous public who simply adore Sven Hjerson, and who’ll flock to see Sven Hjerson. He’s box office, darling!’

Yeah, I can see Christie having exactly this sort of conversation with agents and producers about Poirot and Marple, and I can see Christie using this particular book as a dig at people trying to exploit her characters. And given the resolution of the plot, what a dig this is!!! If only it had deterred her estate to employ Charles Osborne to adapt her plays as novels!

So, while the mystery plot is rather mediocre, the context this novel provides for Poirot as a character that has developed a public persona outside of the books is just marvelous. ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 samantha (books-are-my-life20) rated it it was amazing

As always, Christie comes through with a great mystery with the mind of Poirot. Excellent reading

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Oct 21, 2018 Janete rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books

I read this book in my mother language (Portuguese). I was loving the story but for me the ending was unconvincing and implausible.

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Jan 01, 2018 Lata rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: auth-f, mystery, x2018-read, classic

Fussy. Fastidious. Vain. Brilliant. Poirot's back, but is a little bored, and spends his time carefully considering his meals. And then Superintendent Spence discusses a case with Poirot of a man who was convicted for bashing his landlady on the head. Spence isn't comfortable with the verdict, and gets Poirot to revisit the case for him. Poirot goes to the town of the murder and must stay in a dreadful bed & breakfast, while interviewing the neighbours and generally getting people agitated a ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 سیاوش فتحعلی rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

مثل بقیه آثار نویسنده جذاب و خوشخوان بود.
گره های داستانی خوبی داشت، اما نه لزوما تمام آنها.
نکات روانشناسی، جرم شناسی جالب و قابل تأملی داشت.
خوب بود.

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Jul 02, 2017 David Schaafsma rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: christie, mystery-detective-thriller

Mrs. McGinty's dead. How did she die?
Sticking her neck out, just like I."

“Had Mrs. McGinty a drab life?” (Poirot)

“Ghastly, I expect,” said Mrs. Summerhayes vaguely. “Always on your knees scrubbing. And then piles of other people’s washing-up waiting for you on the sink when you arrive in the morning. If I had to face that every day, I’d be positively relieved to be murdered. I really would.”

After 2-3 books of literary pretension (Hercules Poirot as Hercules, on a quest for detective greatness!), ...more

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Sep 05, 2017 Simona Bartolotta rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, in-italian, 1900

“ The truth is I’m not very good with people.”
“I adore people, don’t you?” said Robin happily.
“No,” said Mrs. Oliver firmly.”

Mrs. McGinty's Dead is, as far as I can tell, a unique product of Christie's prolific mind. To begin with, it's unusually funny and ironic, far more (good-naturedly) mocking toward the Adorable Egg-Head than I would have expected from the book that initiates the final phase of his career. Secondly, in a few occasions it offers delicious examples of meta-talk between Christ ...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Nandakishore Varma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, agatha-christie

"Mrs. McGinty's dead. How did she die?
Sticking her neck out, just like I."

Dame Agatha's penchant to use children's rhymes as an underlying theme for mysteries, enhancing the creepy aspect of many of them, coming to the fore once again. (Really, I hope someone would do a monograph on this quirky aspect of her novels one day.)

Mrs. McGinty was a charwoman - at the beginning of the story, she is dead, bludgeoned to death apparently by her lodger who has been convicted of the crime. But Superintenden ...more

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Dec 22, 2017 Veronique rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: stars-4-0, 2018

This was a fun read to start the year. Once more we are faced with a puzzling murder. Was the man arrested and charged the murderer, or was he framed? The latter of course, which brings our favourite mustachioned Belgian detective to the scene. As you expect, Agatha offers us plenty of red herrings...

However, the reason I enjoyed this novel was for the whole comic angle the author added. Our poor Poirot has to suffer by staying in accommodations that are less than suitable, with nothing that co ...more

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Mar 14, 2018 Mike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, mystery, reviewed

I mean the title kind of gives it away: Mrs. McGinty's Dead. Dead as a door nail. She was a rather boring woman who lead a boring life in a seemingly boring town. There was literally nothing that made her special, she was just a charwoman with no close family and few friends. And yet her murder just didn't seem to add up to Superindendent Spence who, finding his old friend Hercule Poirot otherwise unengaged, enlists his help to figure out just what happened and why. and the stakes are high, her ...more

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Feb 04, 2019 Moonlight Reader rated it liked it · review of another edition

This was only my second time reading this book - the first time I read it, I remember being extremely underwhelmed. Like other Christie's, this one improved the second time I read it. This makes me wonder if rereading Passenger to Frankfurt will somehow turn it into The ABC Murders (kidding, kidding). I attribute this to the fact that I'm less concerned with Christie's high-wire mystery act, and rather I allow myself to be absorbed into her world.

Mrs. McGinty's dead has several wonderful side ch ...more

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Oct 22, 2015 Obsidian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book went on forever. Past the point of anything making sense with so many things thrown at the reader I was past the point of keeping straight anything that was happening. It was a relief when the end came just because I was heartily sick of reading this book at that point. The only saving grace I really found was that we had Poirot in this book from beginning to end and not just his usually "spotlight" appearances in the book.

We begin with Hercule Poirot being visited by Superintendent Sp This book went on forever. Past the point of anything making sense with so many things thrown at the reader I was past the point of keeping straight anything that was happening. It was a relief when the end came just because I was heartily sick of reading this book at that point. The only saving grace I really found was that we had Poirot in this book from beginning to end and not just his usually "spotlight" appearances in the book.

We begin with Hercule Poirot being visited by Superintendent Spence who believes that the wrong man (James Bentley) was tried and convicted for the murder of Mrs. McGinty. Spence is worried that he is sending an innocent man to his death and induces Poirot to investigate for him.

Poirot goes to the local village and begins stirring things up after he starts visiting the late woman's employers. It was interesting to see Poirot in a village and lamenting about home miserable he was, but that was interesting for all of five minutes. Poirot whined incessantly. I don't know if it because I have the character of Poirot tied up with David Suchet's portrayal or what, but I initially loved this character. However, after reading so many books, I heartily dislike Poirot a great deal.

I was a fan of Miss Marple except in one case (Nemesis) and the further I go with Poirot I am flummoxed how anyone would go to him to do anything. He doesn't seem to come to deductions as much as he just asks a lot of questions to see if he can force a reaction out of people.

There are so many other characters in this book it was trying to keep them all straight. We have the re-appearance of Ariadne Oliver (Cards on the Table) who is still freaking aggravating. I know that Mrs. Oliver was styled along the lines of Agatha Christie (she writes mystery novels) but she just runs around sticking her nose in where it's not wanted and actually doesn't do anything at all, unlike the role she played in Cards on the Table.

The character of James Bentley is despised by Poirot because he is a man who has been run over by his now deceased mother and doesn't seem capable of anything without a woman telling him what to do. He doesn't even sound attractive, yet he has a potential for two love interests in this book. Yeah I laughed for a while at that one.

I really can't speak much about the writing, it is typical Christie. The flow was bad in this one. Due to the number of suspects and possibilities of who people are I found myself having to stop and re-remember who certain people were and where they were at certain times. I finally decided to stop trying to figure out who did what and just get to the end.

The setting of the village for this one from beginning to end was marked by many as being typical for Miss Marple (which it is ) and not really something that Poirot ever did. However, we have had Poirot go and stay in villages before when investigating (Dumb Witness, Sad Cypress, etc) but I think many reviewers from when this book was initially published found this to be more humorous than other Poirot novels.

The ending when explained made absolutely no sense. We are left with Poirot trying to match make which also was something that Miss Marple would tend to do in her books, though in this case I just wanted Poirot to shut up and go back to his flat with his valet George. ...more

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Oct 26, 2010 Laurel Young rated it really liked it

Shelves: my-year-of-agatha

This is really a *fun* mystery--I don't normally think of Dame Agatha as funny, but she is quite capable of delightfully dry British humor, and by the time she wrote this novel (in the 1950s) she was well into her long career and comfortable/confident enough to play with a lighter tone when she felt like it. I don't mean that poor Mrs. McGinty's death is treated lightly; it isn't. In fact, few of Dame Agatha's novels feature working-class protagonists, and so I was struck by her sympathetic port ...more

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Apr 20, 2016 Sumit RK rated it liked it · review of another edition

An interesting plot, enough suspects to keep you guessing till the end & a satisfying end (with a usual twist) to tie all ends up. Overall a enjoyable murder mystery that keeps you engaged till the end.

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Aug 14, 2011 Marco Tamborrino rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Come un libro ti possa tenere incollato fino all'ultimissima pagina.

Agatha Christie era un genio. Un genio della trama. È capace di creare dal nulla, ma veramente dal nulla, un meccanismo che ti porta all'esasperazione, all'incredulità. Vorresti sapere chi è l'assassino, vorresti capirlo anche tu, insieme a Poirot, chi è questo benedetto assassino. Ma spesso gli indizi sono comprensibili solo all'autore stesso, il lettore non può far altro che seguire, sconcertato, il succedersi degli eventi, ch ...more

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Apr 10, 2018 Pranta Ghosh Dastider rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Mind-blowing.

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Feb 17, 2018 Vikas Singh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: review-of-the-year

Hercule Poiroit at his best. A gripping story that leaves you in amazed at how skillfully the ace detective with little luck to support manages to solve the crime. Agatha Christie paints a rich tapestry of a small English village with its distinct population. Slowly and slowly she builds each character and as a reader you feel satiated that the author could fulfill your desire to know the real characters. That a crime could be solved after so many years tells a lot about the author's ability to ...more

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Sep 30, 2018 Aarathi Burki rated it liked it

Shelves: audio-books

This book was okish not one of Christie’s best. I didn’t like the plot and there wasn’t much mystery in it except that some women in the past had been associated with crime and now trying to cover it up. I struggled to complete theaudio book and found it boring at places.

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Dec 08, 2010 mark monday rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: choose-ur-adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure!

You are Mrs. McGinty.

If you are not Mrs. McGinty, choose https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

If you are not Mrs. McGinty, and you killed Mrs. McGinty, choose
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

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Sep 07, 2017 Anneta rated it liked it

Well,i did not enjoy this very much.Sometimes it felt comfusing and kind of rushed,though i was not able to guess the muderer.Once again Agatha Christie caught me by surprise with the explanation which was unexpected!Three stars from me!!!

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Dec 03, 2015 Litzy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, ebook, agatha-christie

él primer libro que leo de Agatha Christie. y la verdad me esta gustando como escribe.

Un libro magnifico, no he descubierto quien era el asesino hasta que lo ha dicho Poirot.

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Mar 01, 2015 Poonam rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-thriller-suspense

Such an engaging story with soo many suspicious characters and soo many options for the motive of the murder.

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May 11, 2017 Fred rated it liked it · review of another edition

So why didn't I love this!? The writing for this was brilliant; Poirot was brilliant; Mrs. Oliver, who is a recurring character in the Poirot books, was hilarious! Her moments all made me laugh out loud so I enjoyed all of that. So what were the negative things that overpowered those positive points?

The suspects and the mystery itself felt very rushed. The reason for this is that if we step back and look at it, there aren't any definitive suspects other than James Bentley and so Poirot has to i So why didn't I love this!? The writing for this was brilliant; Poirot was brilliant; Mrs. Oliver, who is a recurring character in the Poirot books, was hilarious! Her moments all made me laugh out loud so I enjoyed all of that. So what were the negative things that overpowered those positive points?

The suspects and the mystery itself felt very rushed. The reason for this is that if we step back and look at it, there aren't any definitive suspects other than James Bentley and so Poirot has to interview everyone in the village who lived near her and knew her well enough to kill her. That is quite a few people to get through, quite a few families. For a host of suspects like that, the book needs to be slow and developed well and the suspects need to be memorable. Mrs. McGinty's Dead did not achieve that in the slightest! The book really whizzed through each and every one of the suspects: it is literally one chapter after another of a whole host of new characters who we only meet for a chapter and then we're expected to remember all of them. That's not difficult: it's impossible! As well as having this host of characters who I didn't remember, none of them were developed enough for me to even connect with them. The only suspect who I even remotely understood and liked was Mrs. Upward but even then, certainly in the first half of the book, I had to use the 'search' function on my Kindle in order to even remember who she was or who any of them were.

So those were two issues I had: the suspects were really rushed and hard to remember and also, their personalities weren't developed. But another issue was the plot. The plot got really messy and slapdash from the middle towards the end of the book. I'm not going to give anything away but effectively, quite early on, Poirot finds out that her death could have been linked to one of four possible murder cases that happened in the past. This is also covered in literally one chapter and it is paragraph after paragraph where articles containing details of each past case are given to us and then we're expected to remember all of that. This was even more annoying was that the rest of the book used that as its foundation to develop the story further so the rest of the story relied on this thing that confused me and wasn't developed. I'll say it again: it is literally just one chapter in which Poirot looks at a newspaper and reads out an explanation of each murder case just once and then expects us to remember all of that. So he spends the rest of the novel trying to find out which one of them is relevant and I was just reading it thinking: "What is this? You expect me to have a first-hand knowledge of all of THAT?" Due to my confusion, that also got in the way of later plotpoints that were introduced into the book and the amount of my mind that was spent following the novel got less and less as the book went on and when I finished it, I thought: "Wow. It was good but do I honestly care that much?"

So again, it was a book that felt flawed and it felt rushed. I would have preferred it if we knew the characters more and if we actually were more involved with what was going on and it wasn't all just thrown at us at once. The suspects were not fleshed out; the story wasn't particularly anything that the reader could connect to and I didn't enjoy it as much as I did at the beginning eventually which is a shame. ...more

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Jan 12, 2018 Hristina Tserovska rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Един от най-заплетените случаи на Еркюл Поаро, в който всички герои изглеждаха подозрителни. И въпреки, че съм изчела толкова много книги за този прословут белгиец отново не познах убиеца. Продължавам със следващото убийство....

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Jun 16, 2011 Kirsty Darbyshire rated it liked it

Not as intriguing as many of Christie's books: I'd never heard of the title before I stumbled upon it going cheap in a second hand bookshop and it's not nearly as good as some of her other work. That doesn't mean that it's a bad book though just that it seems decidedly run of the mill when compared to some of her more original mystery plots. The reader is led astray as usual and suspects nearly everyone but the eventual unmasked murderer of killing the Scottish charlady of the title. When the mu ...more

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Aug 17, 2017 Jenny rated it liked it · review of another edition

A solid mystery. I thought I had it figured out at one point; I actually had a very Agatha/Poirot idea for who did it and why and how Poirot would handle it. But...I was wrong. I was actually surprised by the resolution, which I enjoyed. The book moves a little too slowly for me. The first murder has already happened when the book opens, and the second one happens too late in the story for my liking, but overall, the progress is paced well, and the resolution is semi-climactic. It's a good, thre ...more

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Apr 22, 2018 Racheli Zusiman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-thrillers

אין על אגת'ה כריסטי! ספר בלשי מעולה, עם עלילה מתעתעת ובלתי צפויה. היה תענוג לקרוא. ממש חיכיתי בכיליון עיניים שיום העבודה יסתיים ואוכל לחזור הביתה ולסיים את הספר. אהבתי גם את הקריצה האירונית והמבודחת בדמותה של אריאדנה אוליבר, סופרת ספרי המתח.

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Dec 20, 2016 Neti Triwinanti rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Awalnya tidak berekspektasi banyak ketika memulai membaca buku ini. Dan ternyata, saya sangat suka! bahkan menyelesaikan buku ini dalam waktu kurang dari 2 hari.
Yang saya suka dari buku ini: Kerja sama antara Poirot dengan Inspektur Spence. Di banyak buku detektif yang saya baca, kebanyakan polisi akan berpuas dengan kesimpulan mereka dan tidak mau tahu hal-hal kecil yang terlihat tidak signifikan. Inspektur Spence berbeda.
Hal kedua yang saya suka: latar cerita yang begitu solid dan menarik, te ...more

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About Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Agatha Christie is the best-selling author of all time. She wrote eighty crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and several other books. Her books have sold roughly four billion copies and have been translated into 45 languages. She is t ...more