Reading Update [Poirot June Edition]

So many murders, thanks Agatha Christie.

The A.B.C Murders

Poirot tackles a serial killer! I enjoyed this one, had a great sense of creeping dread as the bodies piled up, and I thought the answers to the mystery made sense.

Murder In Mesopotamia

Christie gets to exposit on archaeological digs - she met her second husband, an archaeologist, on one such digs, and has plenty of detail to share. I enjoyed the exposition, much as I enjoy learning what certain classes of people get up to in these novels.

Unfortunately, not a great mystery. The mechanics of the murder defies belief, but even more so does the setup to it, which makes the victim seem an oblivious fool, more so than any of the oblivious victims we've met so far.

Cards On The Table

They play bridge in this one! I still don't fully understand how regular bridge works, but I love the novel relying on the rules of a card game to structure the possibilities of murder, and there's a fun list of suspects to go through.

Murder in the Mews

A collection of four short stories. The first eponymous one, about an apparent suicide that might be a murder instead, is my favorite for the indignation and sorrow in its final Poirot confrontation, and the mechanics of Dead Man's Mirror are entertainingly intricate.

Dumb Witness

Bro it's called Dumb Witness and she didn't even have the Dumb Witness (the dog) witness anything. Christie, why would you waste this.

This one was just okay - there are no standouts in this cast of Christie-typical archetypes, but no one I found annoying like I did in Death In The Clouds. Poirot partly gets to the correct answer by reasoning that no woman could be both afraid of her husband and afraid for her husband, a take on psychology I don't agree with.

Death On The Nile

I guessed the murderer correctly this time, this is an achievement for me, since normally I nod along and am surprised whenever the books want me to be. There are so many subplots in this book, but the central one works well. I see why it's so often adapted, it makes for a spectacle of folks on a steamer in the Nile, and the central three actors have some interesting stuff to do. I might watch the Suchet or 1978 adaptations, I have heard bad things about the Branagh version. (Mustache backstory!?! Why.)