Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.…

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• At least Hercule Poirot was actively involved in this case. I like it when he actually interviews witnesses, views crime scenes, and sets subtle little traps for people. In the last few novels featuring this particular detective, he didn’t do a whole heck of a lot of investigating. He seemed back to form here.
• I liked that Christie acknowledged Poirot’s age in this novel. She admitted in at least a few interviews that she started him off too old, and then had to find ways to make him not seem as ancient as he would have been if his years unfolded as chronologically as the books. (If he aged in real time, he would have been close to 100 or more in this one!)
• I picked up on the painting clue almost immediately. I knew there had to be a reason it was mentioned so much, and I was right! Score one for me!
• I loved how much Christie made fun of the long-haired, dope smoking hippie youths of the day (the ’60s). Her observations were funny — probably because I share her opinion.

Disliked:

• The story was a bit hard to follow. It was also kind of boring at times, which made me pay even less attention than usual. As a result, by the time the answers were revealed, they made practically zero impact on me.
• The title of this book had me hoping that one of the main threads would be a love triangle direct from a romance novel or soap opera. I think that would have been much better than what readers actually got!
• Wait, was this yet another case of impersonation/fake identity?! Come on, Dame Agatha, I expect more from you than the same old ruse that you’ve used numerous times already!
• How convenient that Norma and the good doctor should run off and get married. It’s funny how Agatha Christie didn’t seem to lose her romantic tastes, even as she got up there in years.
• Since all these murders and whatnot were committed for money, I wish Christie had given the reader a general idea of how much was at stake. I don’t think a figure was ever mentioned. It was just hinted that the Restaricks were very wealthy.
• I still don’t like Ariadne Oliver, and thought she was particularly ridiculous in this one with all her wigs and stuff.
• Speaking of wigs, just how was it that Poirot put everything together simply from knowing that Mrs. Restarick wore a wig? It seemed like a pretty big leap to go from, “Oh, she wears a wig because it’s convenient” to “She wears a wig so she can pose as someone else and commit murder!” Spelling out the intermediary steps would have been helpful.

Rating:

Overall, Third Girl is an Agatha Christie novel that the author herself probably would wish erased from her canon. It just didn’t feel like a real Christie book in the sense that there was very little suspense along the way and most of the book was quite dull. Furthermore, the solution was a stretch and rather implausible. I give this one 2 stars out of 5.

All that is about to change . . . because of a promise.

The school year is almost over. Anxious families await word of college acceptances. In these last pressure-cooker months of high school, some kids will make the all-too-common and all-too-dangerous mistake of drinking and driving. But Myron is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe, so he makes two neighborhood girls promise him: If they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they must call him.

Several nights later, the call comes at 2:00 am, and true to his word, Myron picks up one of the girls in midtown Manhattan and drives her to a quiet cul-de-sac in New Jersey where she says her friend lives.

The next day, the girl’s parents discover that their daughter is missing. And that Myron was the last person to see her. Desperate to fulfill a well-intentioned promise turned nightmarishly wrong, Myron races to find her before she’s gone forever. But his past will not be buried so easily – for trouble has always stalked him, and his loved ones often suffer. Now Myron must decide once and for all who he is and what he will stand up for if he is to have any hope of saving a young girl’s life.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• As with most Myron Bolitar books, the pacing in this one was very good. There were hardly any lulls, and the action kept moving right along through the requisite (for Coben) twists and turns before coming to a conclusion.
• I liked that Myron got his ass kicked by “the twins.” That doesn’t happen nearly enough in the series, despite Myron getting into all sorts of against the odds situations. Sure, Win came to the rescue (as usual), but not until one of the twins took a huge bite (!) out of Myron’s leg.

Disliked:

• As soon as it was revealed that both Katie and Aimee went to the same school but didn’t know each other, I figured a teacher had to be involved somehow. You mean to say the cops never thought to pursue that angle? Give me a break!
• I listened to the audiobook version of this novel, and this time around it was read by Coben himself. OMG, what a disaster!!!! He was terrible! Aside from Myron’s dialogue, which was read in Coben’s regular voice, ALL the other characters sounded pretty much the same. And he made Win go from sounding like the snooty, arrogant, rich boy that he was in Jonathan Maerosz’s interpretation to sounding like a little old lady. I’m telling you, it was awful!
• Okay, so let me get this straight. Dr. Skylar kidnapped Aimee because her son (Aimee’s teacher) impregnated the girl and Dr. Skylar didn’t want Aimee to get an abortion??? What the…? Coben’s novels are usually twisty, but this was just too much.
• God, it was annoying how Coben constantly said “ATM machine” throughout the book. ATM = automated teller machine, so ATM machine = automated teller machine machine. Ugh. And yes, I know people say it like that in real life (and I’m guilty of the same thing with saying “PIN number”), but hearing it 100 times in succession made me want to rip my ears off.
• Why would Myron make himself available to 18-year-old girls in that way? Of course he wouldn’t do anything with them, but it’s just very inappropriate for a 40-something, single, male friend of the family to offer to be the designated driver for teen girls that he barely knows. What’s next, offering to let junior high school kids check out the home dlp projector in his basement? What a weirdo!
• I didn’t like any of Myron’s relationship stuff, not Jessica coming back and certainly not the new woman (9/11 widow) with kids. None of it is interesting, and doesn’t really belong in an “action” novel.
• Esperanza has a kid? And is married? Wait, when did all this happen? I know Myron went to her wedding and gave her away and all, but that whole thing felt so sudden and utterly contrived. Couldn’t she at least have ended up with a woman??? After making so much out of her bisexuality or whatever, that was the least Coben could have done. Oh, well.

Rating:

I generally like the Myron Bolitar series, but Promise Me was a bit too disjointed for my tastes. It seemed like the story kept jumping all over the place without giving readers any time to get their bearings. As a result, little made sense as the story was unfolding, and the ending felt like it was pulled out of thin air. I give this one 2 stars out of 5.

Between baking up a storm for The Cookie Jar and unravelling the mystery of her cat Moishe’s recent strange behaviour, Hannah Swensen has a lot on her plate. But she’ll always make time for her business partner, Lisa, who’s in the midst of preparing for a big family reunion. Everyone is delighted when Lisa’s long-lost uncle makes a surprise appearance. No one has heard from Gus in twenty-five years – and his arrival has everyone buzzing with excitement. Uncle Gus is immediately the hit of the reunion, telling tales of his great success and flashing money for all to see. He’s almost as popular as Hannah’s scrumptious carrot cake, which is also Gus’ favourite dessert. But the next morning, as the whole family gathers for the group photo, one person is missing. Hannah offers to track down Uncle Gus, but her search leads to a shocking find.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• The recipes sound delicious, as usual. I swear, one of these days I’m going to get around to trying them out!
• At this point in the series, the only enjoyment I derive out of the books is rolling my eyes at them and sputtering about how stupid and unrealistic they are. It’s a waste of time for sure, but at least I can turn my brain off for a couple of days while I read.

Disliked:

• I have never seen an author stick to a formula as stubbornly as Joanne Fluke does. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has actual chapter templates that she fills in for every book. It would look something like this: 1) Create some schmaltzy small-town event for Lake Eden; 2) Have a stranger or long-lost relative show up unannounced; 3) Stranger/relative gets killed; 4) Hannah finds the body; 5) Mike warns Hannah to stay away, Norman and Andrea encourage her to investigate; 6) Hannah interviews everyone with the slightest connection to the victim — and they actually talk to her; 7) Hannah figures out who the killer is, confronts the person, and nearly dies; Mike swoops in for the rescue. *Yawn.*
• The Mike-Norman-Hannah triangle is beyond tiresome at this point. The situation might be believable if Fluke were writing about the 1880′s, but certainly not for 30-somethings in this day and age. You mean to tell me that these men are perfectly content to “share” Hannah, and that after however many months/years it has been, they’re just fine with asexual pats on the shoulder and a quick kiss here and there? Yeah, right! Fluke really shows her age when she writes about this triangle.
• Don’t even get me started about Gus having a Honus Wagner baseball card. It is the rarest, most valuable card in the world, with only a handful (less than 200) even produced, let alone circulating. The card would have already been rare when Gus was a kid, so it’s highly unlikely that he would have had one to begin with. Oh, and the part where Gus’s sister clearly recalled exactly what the card looked like 30 years later (even though she wasn’t a baseball fan and didn’t realize the thing was valuable) was just laughably ridiculous.
• Fluke’s dialogue is just clunky and awkward. Like when Mac’s wife was trying to convince him not to kill her, she said, “I’ve been a legal secretary for 30 years, so I know…” Would a wife really need to explain that to her husband??? As if he didn’t know what kind of job she had or as if she strolled out in nurses uniforms every day instead of business attire suited for a law office?
• Oh, don’t look now, but Hannah’s perfect niece once again came in first place in some stupid competition.
• Honestly, there was a bunch of other stuff that I hated, but what’s the point of spelling everything out?

Rating:

This is a typical paint-by-numbers Hannah Swensen “mystery.” I suppose if you like cozies that deliver the exact same product each and every time, this will be to your taste. I read the book simply because I have it (I have the whole series, actually) and because I like to roll my eyes at Fluke’s grandmotherly ways. I give this one 2 stars out of 5.

“Murders in the Rue Morgue” is widely held to be the first detective story, though Poe called it a work of “ratiocination.” This locked roomy mystery features literature’s first detective, C. Auguste Dupin (though he is never referred to as such), who solves the crime based on clues that the incompetent Paris police force overlook.

“The Purloined Letter” is another Dupin mystery; “The Thousand-and-Second Night of Scheherazade” imagines the storyteller of the 1001 Arabian Nights continuing her tales for another evening; “A Descent into the Maelstrom” is the story of a man who survives a hurricane and whirlpool while out to sea; “The Raven” is about a grieving lover’s waning sanity; and “The Masque of the Red Death” is a horror story about a group of nobles who try to wait out a plague by hiding in a castle.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• Of course I’d heard of “Murders in the Rue Morgue” before, but this was the very first time I ever read (or, more accurately, listened to) it. It was nice to finally get a look at the first detective story ever written — and to disabuse myself of the notion that the murders took place in a morgue called Rue! (Now I know Rue Morgue is a fictional street in Paris. Duh.)
• “The Raven” is one of my favorite poems of all time. I know its true literary merit is constantly being debated, but I think the rhyme scheme is actually pretty clever and a bit complicated if you really analyze it. I always prefer rhyming poetry anyway, so it’s no wonder I love this one.

Disliked:

• I thought the solution to the Rue Morgue murders was rather far-fetched. An escaped orangutan? Really??? That was underwhelming, to say the least. Plus, there’s the whole thing about the reader not having a fair shot as solving the crime since there was zero indication at all that an orangutan might be involved. Sigh.
• “The Thousand-and-Second Night of Scheherazade” and “A Descent into the Maelstrom” were incredibly boring to me. I barely paid attention to those and couldn’t figure out why they were included in this story collection. I guess there’s a reason these two pieces are hardly mentioned when talking about Poe’s works.

Rating:

I wasn’t all that entertained by Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Stories, and think the collection deserves only 2 stars if rated on entertainment merit alone. But I feel compelled to acknowledge the fact that Poe launched an entire genre — one that I love today — and for that reason, bump up my rating to 3 stars out of 5.

Myron’s sports agency is struggling. Now more than ever Myron needs to keep his eye on the ball, sign up some big-name clients, and turn away from the amateur detective work that is taking precious time away from the agency. But life is not going according to plan. Myron’s father, recently recovered from a heart attack, is facing his own mortality–and forcing Myron to face it too. Then comes another surprise.

Emily Downing, Myron’s college sweetheart, reappears in his life with devastating news: Her thirteen-year-old son Jeremy is gravely ill and can be saved only by a bone-marrow transplant–from a donor who has vanished without a trace. And before Myron can absorb this revelation, Emily hits him with an even bigger shocker: Jeremy is Myron’s son, conceived the night before Emily’s wedding to another man.

Staggered by the news, Myron plunges into a search for the missing donor. But for Myron, finding the only person in the world who can save a boy’s life means cracking open a mystery as dark as it is heartbreaking–a mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and a cat-and-mouse game between an ambitious reporter and the FBI.

Somewhere in the sordid mess is the man who once signed his name to a bone-marrow donor’s registry, then disappeared. And as doubts emerge about Jeremy’s true paternity, a child vanishes, igniting a chain reaction of truth and revelation that will change everyone’s life forever.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• This was a typical Myron Bolitar book, complete with the over-the-top, inappropriate, and ill-timed humor that readers have come to expect from Myron and Win. In that way, it was an easy, comfortable read.
• I liked the way Coben treated the revelation that Myron was the father. I was worried that it would turn out to be a bluff on Emily’s part just to get Myron to help, which of course would have been the ultimate cop-out. Coben didn’t let Myron off the hook like that, but he didn’t treat the situation as a touchy-feely time for celebrating. Nobody decided to take advantage of a backwoods cigars free shipping offer to order some celebratory stogies, there was no clinking of champagne glasses, etc. And I liked that Greg didn’t die, either. That also would have been way too much of a cop-out. Now Myron is stuck with an uncomfortable, uncertain situation — just as most people would be “in real life.”
• The whole storyline involving the writer (Stan Gibbs) was interesting. I couldn’t figure out exactly what the guy had to do with the plot, but knew it was something big. I knew he couldn’t be the original kidnapper/killer because of his age, but I liked the twist of him covering for his father and murdering his girlfriend to keep the secret.
• I love Myron’s relationship with his parents. It’s very rare to see adult protagonists portrayed as being so close to his or her parents in a healthy, non-dysfunctional way. This is a unique aspect of the Bolitar books that I really appreciate.
• I liked that Myron and Greg didn’t suddenly become best friends after all was said and done. There’s just too much history and bad blood between them to have it all evaporate in a matter of days.

Disliked:

• It really bugged me the way Myron kept saying that all they had to do was “find the donor”, as if that would be the final solution to everything. I mean, he basically took it for granted that if they found the match, the guy would be perfectly willing to donate his marrow. Not once did Myron and Emily talk about how they would “convince” or “persuade” or even “beg” this mythical donor to give up his marrow. The be all and end all was just finding the guy. Perhaps it’s just semantics, but this really did rub me the wrong way.
• Okay, I think I liked the “are we good or are we evil” debate in the last Bolitar novel, but I don’t want that same old question to be rehashed in every installment. It’s already getting boring!
• Maybe I missed something, but I didn’t understand the whole Dennis Lex identity swap thing. Why did Stan’s father need a fake ID anyway? He was never a suspect in any crimes, so I don’t get why he needed to steal Dennis’s ID in the first place. Was that just an unnecessary twist on Coben’s part?
• I just don’t like Big Cyndi at all. I know a lot of readers/fans think she’s funny or whatever, but whenever I read Coben’s descriptions of her gaudy wardrobe and makeup, it just sounds like he’s trying way too hard to be “different.”

Rating:

Overall, I thought Darkest Fear was a very solid entry in the Myron Bolitar series. It had some flaws, but it was still a page-turner for the most part and it sets up some very interesting possibilities for future books. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• This had to be one of the greatest murder mystery setups of all time! It was quite a shock to learn that those clocks didn’t belong to Mrs. Pebmarsh, and from that point forward I was hooked because I just had to know what was the significance of those clocks!
• Am I supposed to know who Colin Lamb is? I’ve read all Christie books prior to this one, but don’t recall the character. The way he was spoken of in the book, as a great friend of Poirot, etc. made me feel like he had made a prior appearance. At any rate, I thought he was a decent narrator. I liked when the story was told from his point of view better than when it was the generic third-person pov.
• I recognized the Rear Window connection immediately, but had to look up dates to see which came first, Hitchcock or Christie. The Hitchcock film was made in 1954, while this book was published in 1963, so I guess the girl with the broken leg was Dame Agatha’s shoutout to Hitch.
• Poirot finally did what he has always said he could do: he solved a case without talking to a single witness, visiting a single crime scene, or leaving his armchair!

Disliked:

• Oh, man, that ending was simply terrible! It felt like such a cheap cop-out to have the clocks not signify anything at all. How did Poirot manage to guess that the clocks were merely placed there as a diversion to make the murder seem more complex than it actually was?
• I didn’t feel as though readers had a legitimate shot of solving this one. There were too many red herrings and facts that didn’t emerge until too late to make a decent guess.
• Wow, that’s not any kind of neighborhood I’d like to live in. It seemed like such a quiet, out-of-the-way place, but it actually harbored brutal killers and spies.

Rating:

The Clocks by Agatha Christie starts out so well that the momentum from the opening scenes carries readers quite a long way through the book. I found that I was pretty much interested in this one from beginning to end, and couldn’t wait to see what the solution was. Unfortunately, the solution was a massive disappointment and drops my rating down to 3 stars out of 5.

Miss Marple finds herself quite disturbed by this turn of events. She’d just spent the previous evening speaking with the major, who’d seemed to her to be in perfectly good health. He’d been telling her about a photograph that he had—”a snapshot of a murderer…,” he’d claimed. Convinced that the major’s death was not at all natural, she begins to ask difficult questions. It soon becomes clear that a murderer is lurking among her companions at the hotel, and it is up to Miss Marple to root this person out before he or she can strike again.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• As with most Agatha Christie books, this one was a breezy read. It was very enjoyable and I got through it in a single weekend. The plot was lean, with zero extraneous scenes or boring parts that had to be plowed through.
• Miss Marple was involved from beginning to end. I love Miss Marple, and have been disappointed by past books featuring this elderly detective because she only made a cursory appearance near the end. But she is featured very heavily in A Caribbean Mystery, which added to the charm (if “charm” can be used to describe a murder mystery!).
• Miss Marple’s realization that Major Palgrave could have only been looking in one direction because of his glass eye was pretty clever. I have to admit that detail slipped right by me.
• I thought Christie did a good job of including some plausible suspects in the suspect pool. I thought for sure Lucky was involved somehow, and then my focus shifted to Jackson about halfway through. I didn’t come close to guessing that Tim Kendall was the real killer.

Disliked:

• I wasn’t too thrilled with the part about Tim Kendall being an assumed identity. How are readers supposed to guess something like that? Also, I think this is the third or even fourth time one of Christie’s killers had been working under a false name. I just kind of rolled my eyes at the repetition. Sure, I know plenty of real killers probably change their names when running away from crimes. I don’t doubt that as a means of living while on the lam. But I do find it a bit tiresome that Christie had to reach back to the same gimmick that she used in previous books.

Rating:

Overall, I thought A Caribbean Mystery was a solid piece of old-school detective fiction. The great Miss Marple graces almost every single page, the murderer’s identity was fairly difficult to guess (for me, at least), and the motive was believable. I wish the killer had a more original backstory, but with as many novels as Christie wrote, I guess it’s no surprise that she had to recycle a bit. Nevertheless, I give this book 4 stars out of 5.

It promises to be a busy week for Hannah Swensen. Not only is she whipping up treats for the chamber of commerce booth at the fair; she’s also judging the baking contest; acting as a magician’s assistant for her business partner’s husband; trying to coax Moishe, her previously rapacious feline, to end his hunger strike, and performing her own private carnival act by juggling the demands of her mother and sisters.

With so much on her plate, it’s no wonder Hannah finds herself on the midway only moments before the fair closes for the night. As the lights click off, she realizes that she’s not alone among the shuttered booths and looming carnival attractions. After hearing a suspicious thump, she goes snooping – only to discover Willa Sunquist, a student teacher and fellow bake contest judge, dead alongside an upended key lime pie. But who would want to kill Willa and why? Before long Hannah is sifting through motives and a list of suspects which include a high school student Willa flunked, the hot-blooded brothers of a disqualified beauty contestant, a rodeo cowboy, a baking competitor who failed to win her yearly blue ribbon, and the college professor Willa was dating.

As fair week draws to a close, Hannah cranks up the heat, hoping that the killer will get rattled and make a mistake. If that happens she intends to be there, even if it means getting on a carnival ride that could very well be her last…

Liked:

• Hannah seemed to be much less of a know-it-all in this book than in previous volumes. She didn’t figure out who the killer was, nor did she even so much as correct anyone’s grammar (not out loud, anyway). That was a refreshing change, for sure.
• The Hannah/Mike/Norman triangle was kept to a minimum. Yes, there were still the usual eye-roll inducing passages about how both of the men are just crazy about her and about how she can’t decide which one to choose, but I guess that’s to be expected at this point. At least there were no dueling dates or anything too ridiculous.
• There were no scenes of precocious Tracy talking like a full-grown adult! Hallelujah!

Disliked:

• The murder didn’t take place until about 1/3 of the way through the book, and even then Hannah didn’t really investigate. Why does Fluke wait so long to get to the point? It’s not as though she spent that time developing Willa’s character or setting up possible motives for the murder. She just went on and on about the stupid fair. Yawn.
• Do Hannah and her immediate circle have to win EVERY SINGLE CONTEST ever held in Lake Eden? Norman won the photography contest, Lisa’s mother-in-law won the baking contest, Andrea and Tracy won the mother-daughter lookalike contest in their matching t shirts, Michelle won the beauty pageant. Give me a break!!!
• The cat story was predictable right from the beginning, and didn’t deserve the number of pages Fluke devoted to it.

Rating:

I have grown accustomed to the relative cheesiness of the Hannah Swensen mystery series, so I always lower my expectations when reading these books. As such, I found Key Lime Pie Murder to be your average Joanne Fluke offering. Heavy on small-town neighborliness, and light on actual plot. At least the writing is competent and the story flows along at a decent clip. I give this book 3 stars out of 5.

A short time later, Heather Badcock ends up dead. What happened was she had accidentally spilled her cocktail on her dress, so Marina Gregg, who was standing nearby, offered Heather her (Marina’s) own drink. After quaffing that drink, Heather suffered a fatal seizure, which the coroner later attributes to a drug overdose.

The police inspectors called in to investigate the crime assume that Marina Gregg was actually the intended target. After all, it had been Marina’s drink that killed Heather, and Marina was in more of a position to have enemies than a simple St. Mary Mead housewife.

Miss Marple, extremely old now and so frail that she needs a live-in companion, hears about the case and starts asking questions of those who were at the party. She even meets with Inspector Craddock to compare notes. They consider several suspects, including both husbands, uncover a blackmailing scheme when two more people end up dead, and eventually get to the bottom of the original mystery.

Liked:

• This was a rather engrossing mystery. I was involved in the story right from the start, and enjoyed it all the way through.
• It’s kind of funny how Christie’s 1962 descriptions of an aging actress desperately trying to hold on to fame can still be applied today.
• Isn’t it amazing how Miss Marple can solve the murder after just the most cursory glance at the crime scene? I guess she really doesn’t have anything to do all day except “unravel” these types of problems!

Disliked:

• I take issue with the motive for the murder. When I first read about Heather Badcock having German measles while meeting a pregnant Marina Gregg for the first time, I didn’t make the connection between German measles and birth defects. How likely is it that Marina Gregg would have done so? Is the link between German measles and mental retardation in infants that well known? This is a critical point, as Marina Gregg would have had to instantaneously recognize the link in order to commit the murder so quickly.
• Is it really possible that Marina Gregg wouldn’t recognize her ex-husband? Even if their marriage was from many, many years before? That seems unlikely. Not recognizing the adopted daughter was also a bit of a stretch, but far more believable than not recognizing a former husband.

Rating:

Despite the flaws, I found that I enjoyed The Mirror Crack’d quite a bit. This particular book probably doesn’t rank very high on Christie’s all-time list, but it’s a good one — especially for Marple fans. I was kept guessing about the murderer and motive all the way through, and though I didn’t really care for the motive explanation, that disappointment didn’t take much away from my overall enjoyment. I give this book 4 stars out of 5.

At first glance, this would seem like a typical murder investigation — except for the fact that all the “victims” ostensibly died of natural causes. The police are befuddled. So is Mark, who has no vested interest in getting involved anyway. At least, not until a short time later when a friend named Poppy mentions something strange about the Pale Horse. This is the name of an old inn where three women who claim to be witches now live. According to Poppy, these women can cause people to die by casting spells on them.

Mark doesn’t believe that for a second, but decides to investigate out of curiosity. He begins poking around, and discovers that the Pale Horse does indeed help dispose of people. This happens under the guise of betting: If you want your stepmother out of the way, simply make a bet that she will live past Christmas. Mr. Bradley, the front man of the Pale Horse, will bet the opposite position. That’s how the arrangements and payment are made.

The rest of the novel then shows how Mark, Ariadne Oliver, Inspector Lejeune, and Ginger work to unravel the mystery of how the Pale Horse folks kill their victims and who is the man behind all of it.

(Ugh, I realize this summary is extremely lacking, but this is kind of a hard book to recap.)

Liked:

• I loved the solution to the mystery. There were some very misleading clues, and I have to admit that I was quite a bit off base with what I thought the answer would be. The fact that the pharmacist Osborne was the killer was an interesting reveal, as was the motive behind the whole Pale Horse idea.
• The story moved along at a decent clip, which is pretty much all I ask for out of these Christie books. There weren’t too many detours along the way, so I barely had a chance to get bored.
• Ariadne Oliver is kind of growing on me as a character. I wasn’t too thrilled with her the first few times I encountered her in Christie’s books, but now I find her to be the comic relief she’s meant for.

Disliked:

• I thought the Corrigan name thing went nowhere. What was the point of that? There was a victim named Corrigan, Ginger’s name was Corrigan, and the coroner’s name was Corrigan. The characters mentioned the coincidence, but then it played absolutely no role in the solution. Was this just meant to be misdirection? Odd, since neither the coroner nor Ginger were ever serious suspects.
• The supernatural stuff was kind of ridiculous. Of course no one believed that the “witches” could simply cast spells on people and have them drop dead a few days later, so why waste all that time describing seances and so forth?

Rating:

I liked The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie more than I thought I would, considering the fact that none of the major detectives plays a role in the story. The solution to the mystery was interesting and will definitely keep you guessing, but the journey to the answer was average at best. I give this book 3 stars out of 5.