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Avg. Rating: 3
I LOVE A MYSTERY
I'm currently a bit hooked on classic mysteries (blame it on PBS's 'Mystery' series), and looking through my horde of books, I found Agatha Christie's "Third Girl", a 1966 work featuring Christie's famed Hercule Poirot. What is immediately striking is the setting of the novel; mod 1966 England, an odd place for Poirot who is, at least on TV, ususally associated with the 1930s and '40s. Also unexpected is Christie's kind narrative which is an impressive unbiased view of the era's youth drug culture; she speaks of junkiedom as if it were a passing teen fad, as serious or frivolous as any other era'a hang-ups. In "Third Girl", a young girl arrives in Poirot's office and announces she may have committed a murder. She disappears before Poirot can find out anything else regarding her bizarre statement and he spends the bulk of the novel searching for her and deciphering what she meant. Although there are a series of mini-who done its throughout the book, the question really is, "Say what?" I suspect hard core fans of the genre will confidentally figure this mystery out before it's conclusion, but I was over taxed with clues, and the resolution and the path leading up to it are a bit hokey, and reliant on extremely unlikely coincidences, facts and answers seem to fall at our detective's feet, and even though the final answer is like a product in an exquisite math equation, it is still a trick question. That's ok though, it's not so much the mystery which attracts me to the genre, particularly Christie's work; it's her heroes, their mannerisms and idiosyncracies, their minds, their friends, their homes and homes away from home, like Miss Marple reading Dashiel Hammett over a cup of tea when a gunshot is heard, or Hercule Poirot delving into a chocolate layered desert while paging through an art book on French paintings, when suddenly it occurs to him who the killer must be, and he calls everybody into the room to name the murderer. I like answers in a real world of little resolve.
A slightly different Poirot adventure.
Third Girl is an experimental effort by Agatha Christie. Of course, it's still very much a whodunnit, but the style of writing is more youthful than most of her other works. I guess it's Christie's way of portraying the hippie era. Despite the more "bouncy" approach, at times this book is difficult to read because the paragraphs seem to ramble on. Some paragraphs even spanned a page, which is quite frustrating. Still, it's a nice little mystery that should provide an interesting challenge for her fans, even though I guessed the outcome halfway through it - the clues are just too obvious. Overall, not the best of Christie's work. I'll recommend it for the completist, as in, fans who want to read every one of Hercule Poirot's adventures.
Quite the surprise, this one!
This book is actually quite different from most of Ms. Christie's books. We still get the same great characters and plot, and we see Hercule Poirot at the height of his powers, but it has a totally surprising ending. It is also a really good snapshot of what the establishment thought of young people during the height of the hippie era. The book starts with a young woman coming to Poirot's house and interrupting his breakfast. She tells him that she thinks she may have committed a murder, and then leaves suddenly without saying anymore. Poirot enlists the help of his friend Ariadne Oliver to try to track down who the girl was, and when they find out, they find a real "mare's nest" of a family. Ms. Christie is such a wonderful author, and this book is certainly interesting, if different than most of hers. She is still tops in this field, and each of her books is entertaining as well as written to get the reader to actually think.
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