Peril At End House by Agatha Christie

We return to the quest for the ideal starting book for budding Agatha-philes with this very early entry in Poirot’s adventures. This is the sixth novel (not counting Black Coffee) and so far, the only ground-breaking entry into the series is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – if you haven’t read it, go and read it NOW!

Nick Buckley, a young heiress is dining with Hercule Poirot and Hastings, recounting tales of recent near misses with death, when she swats a wasp away. On closer examination, there is a bullet hole in the brim of her hat and a bullet on the ground nearby. It wasn’t a wasp!

Now Poirot, despite having recently retired, charges himself with protecting Nick. But the attempts continue until someone lies dead.

This was one of the first Poirot novels that I read, and I’ve got very fond memories of it. But I’ve said that before…

I’ve referred to this as ground-breaking because it’s the first time that Christie uses what must be one of her favourite tricks – she uses it at least twice more in the Miss Marple books but I think it’s done a bit better there. This is going to be difficult to comment on the issues I had with this book second time around without hinting at the plot. Still, never let it be said that I shied away from a challenge…

Basically, it’s signposted far too heavily. The majority of the suspects are under-developed with, arguably, only Nick herself and the murderer get much of a personality, and as such, you find your focus too much on the murderer so that when they drop the crucial clues, you notice them. And the central clue, which concerns the motivation for the mayhem, isn’t done very subtly. An important fact is mentioned a few too many times to be missed and… hmmm… let’s say that of the two things that appear to be different that are in fact the same, one is too close to what it actually is for it to be missable. Is that cryptic enough? And let’s not get into the convoluted nonsense about the poisoned chocolates…

Worst of all, Poirot comes off as a bit of a chump. It doesn’t help that Hastings’ narration doesn’t give us an insight into Poirot’s thoughts, like we had in Mrs McGinty’s Dead, but it does seem odd that he doesn’t even consider the truth until very late on. You could say that it’s early in his career, but it’s not – just early in the bits that Christie wrote about.

Now the reason that I loved this when I first read it – probably roughly thirty years ago – was that I solved it, motive, clues et al. Now I see why – it’s obvious, I think.

Now that obviousness of the plot might make this a contender for that introduction to Christie that I’m looking for, but I’m not convinced. Other books do the trick and hide the trick better, so maybe this should be read before them… maybe not…

So, recommended if you haven’t read it and want an “easy” Christie. I’d warn against a re-read, though.