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Dead Man's Folly (Hercule Poirot, #35)

Agatha Christie,

David Suchet (Narrator)

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Dec 23, 2021 Werner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-crime-fiction

This mystery begins with a phone call to Poirot from Christie alter ego Araidne Oliver (who's appeared in some earlier Poirot novels), summoning him from London to Nasse House, the great estate that dominates the village of Nassecombe in Devonshire (part of southwestern England). It's soon to be the venue for an annual local fete, a kind of community fundraiser, common in rural England, which features contests, raffles, refreshments, fortune telling, etc. An added attraction at this particular o This mystery begins with a phone call to Poirot from Christie alter ego Araidne Oliver (who's appeared in some earlier Poirot novels), summoning him from London to Nasse House, the great estate that dominates the village of Nassecombe in Devonshire (part of southwestern England). It's soon to be the venue for an annual local fete, a kind of community fundraiser, common in rural England, which features contests, raffles, refreshments, fortune telling, etc. An added attraction at this particular one is to be a Murder Hunt, a mock murder in which contestants will have to engage in a kind of scavenger hunt for prearranged "clues" and guess the identity of the "killer." Our famous mystery writer has been engaged to construct the scenario and "clues" for this game. Ostensibly, she's asked Poirot there to present the prize to the winner. In reality, she's picked up vibes which suggest to her "woman's intuition" that something undefined but ominous is seriously amiss at Nasse House, and she wants to enlist Poirot's help in uncovering it. That's not much to go on, but he takes her seriously --and events soon demonstrate that he was right to do so.

IMO, Christies' literary style is pretty consistent across the span of the Poirot novels (at least, those I've read), as is her portrayal of her main character, and the series' continuing supporting characters. (Captain Hastings is absent here, though, and we're told that Poirot hasn't seen him for many years.) The great detective's ever-efficient secretary, Miss Lemon, is something of a cipher and a caricature --she's humanized considerably in the Mystery! adaptations-- but in general, Christie's characters are very vital and realistic, and that's true of the diverse cast at Nasse House. She constructs the mystery tightly and effectively, with clues masterfully hidden in plain sight. I was able to predict the basic premise of the solution (although one key detail totally eluded me), and that wasn't because I'd read the book as a preteen kid; my memories of that read were only vestigial. Rather, it was only because I'd seen part of the denouement of the 1986 movie adaptation starring Peter Ustinov (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090914/ ). If I hadn't, I'm not sure I'd have been able to divine as much as I did.

Although Christie is not among those writers who pay much attention to social issues in their work, this book (published in 1956) does have its share of passing comments that reflect on the socio-economic and cultural changes taking place in England following World War II. (And comments of this sort are more marked here than in Mrs. McGinty's Dead, the earlier postwar Poirot novel I read this summer, though they're there too.) These include a steep rise in the cost of living due to inflation (meaning that it costs much more than formerly to pay a living wage); the spread of electricity and electrical appliances, and the growing perception of these as necessities; and the massive increases in the inheritance taxes on large amounts of landed property owned by individuals. There's a very definite feel that the milieu of the interwar world, in which Poirot got his literary start, is surviving on borrowed time, and that landed gentry (like those who built the first Nasse House in 1598) are an endangered species. That gives the novel a certain bittersweet quality, even for readers like myself who support social equality and distrust inherited privilege. ...more

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