Homewrecker holiday.

While doing the taking time off thing, Poirot again manages to find trouble. This time an actress who delights in the seduction of married men encounters someone who objects rather terminally to her activities.

With a random assorted of holidaygoers at a nice beach there are plenty of possible suspects for Poirot to run through the machine of little grey cells.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/11... ( )

This was my first Agatha Christie book, and I was very pleased with it. The book had so many plot twist and turns. It was hard to put down. It would be a great beach read! I will definitely read some more books by this author. Mrs. Christie does a great job of playing at each one of her characters’ personalities, and had a great way of throwing suspicion at everyone without knowing until the end how and who did it. Highly recommended! ( )

Quite a comples plot in this one, cleverly worked out by Agatha Christie.Very readable - couldn't put it down. ( )

Poirot is attempting to enjoy a nice holiday closer to home—a secluded English beach resort. There, a love triangle presents itself; a beautiful woman with a solid British husband cavorts with the husband of a rather plain Englishwoman. When lovely Arlena is found dead, Poirot assists the local police and by the end, he’ll show that nothing was as it seemed. The good are rewarded, the wicked punished, the innocent but upset are wisely consoled. ( )

Evil Under the Sun is a classic Christie mystery, with a cast of players from many different backgrounds converging for no other reason than a lighthearted holiday at the exclusive Leathercombe Bay beach resort. Poirot makes an excellent point right at the beginning of the story about how a vacation resort would be a good place to stage a murder, because the murderer does not have to account for his presence near his enemy; it's a vacation and anyone might meet at such a place.

It's quite obvious from the outset who is slated for being murdered in this story. Arlena Marshall (stage name Arlena Stuart) is a beautiful actress who is vacationing at Leathercombe Bay with her husband Captain Marshall and stepdaughter Linda. Arlena is a man-eater; she adores men and does everything she can to attract them. She enjoys her power of breaking up families, and is universally disliked by all the women at the resort. The men, while mostly acknowledging her scandalous reputation, also admit her decided charm and beauty. A little drama starts to play out when a young husband, Patrick Redfern, falls under Arlena's spell. Everyone pities the poor wife, Christine Redfern, but there is nothing that can be done about it... until someone strangles Arlena in cold blood.

The thing about Arlena's murder is that almost everyone at the resort could have a motive for wishing her out of the way. A woman like that attracts much hostility from other women, and could also conceivably create male enemies by her capricious favors. Poirot must navigate the many different stories given by the other vacationers, and fit the random bits of information into his puzzle to create the picture of what really happened. Again, Christie managed to fool me, though I did think it was a crime that had to involve more than one person. I just had the wrong people picked out, of course! Without getting too spoilery — I do think Christie uses a certain technique a little too freely in her stories. It stretches one's credibility just a bit, but I suppose that's the right of the genre. We go in expecting to be fooled, and enjoy it.

The whole book was a bit spoiled by the last scene between Captain Marshall and Rosamund Darnley. Rosamund is a successful businesswoman who has loved Captain Marshall from childhood. When they finally confess their love, Captain Marshall is a bit harsh about forcing Rosamund to give up her dressmaking business. She has to, "or else you're no good to me!" It turns out that living with him in the country is just what she wants, but his attitude about it was so off-putting. I'm no raging feminist, but it was enough to be bothersome. Maybe Christie was trying to show how he had given up the unhealthy chivalrous rescuing complex he had demonstrated in his two previous marriages? It's not a huge deal, but it did rather sour the ending for me.

Another thing that slightly annoyed me was how Christie constantly refers to her characters by their full names. Rosamund is not Rosamund; she is Rosamund Darnley, every time she is referred to. It's the same with Patrick Redfern and most of the other characters. I'm not sure if this is Christie's way of putting distance between herself and her characters, or if she is creating uncertainty as to how familiar one should feel with them, or what. She doesn't do this with the less prepossessing characters, like young Linda and Patrick's wife Christine. It could very well be a technique Christie has used in all her books and that I just noticed now because this was an audiobook.

This was the unabridged audiobook read by the incomparable David Suchet, who plays the definitive Poirot to perfection in the TV adaptations. I really enjoyed Suchet's narration. He does a wonderful job with all the characters' voices, and really gives each one a distinctive personality. This was the first Christie book I'd listened to on CD, and I would certainly listen to more of them. This is a fairly well-done mystery with an interesting collection of characters and an unexpected finish. Fans of the genre who don't mind a few dated ideas will probably enjoy this. ( )