Appointment with Death

Appointment With Death (1937) (Poirot #19) by Agatha Christie. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. From the start where Poirot just :happens” to accidentally overhear damning evidence to his treatment of the suspects, none of it fit well with me. In a Poirot novel I want the Belgian to be somehow included in the ways and means of the mystery, not brought in at a later time to act as judge of an entire family. And the way he treats everyone involved is pretty revolting.
I expect to have more of Poirot throughout the novel, not have him relegated to the second have of the story. The first section is taken up by the victim and her family. She is Mrs. Boynton, a horrible sadist whose victims are the one group of people she show more should care the most about. Her family, her three step-children and her own daughter, are and have been subject to the most despicable mental torture for their entire lives, Shut away from the world with the old woman out in the country, they never managed to break away from her.
For that I find little sympathy for the two boys and the two daughters. Somehow one son has managed to get married, only to have his wife sucked into the old spider’s web.
For some reason, not adequately explained in the novel, the entire troupe find themselves away from home for the first time and in Jerusalem of all places. When a side trip to Petra proves fatal to the heart disease ridden old martinet, all the family and several others come under the suspicion of the local police chief. Fortunately for him Poirot just happens to be visiting and decides he will take on the case.
But what he really does is continue on with the torture that was supposed to have died with the mother. Poirot seems overly egotistical in this venture, more so than what he appears to present in his other outings. He acts as a hammer with every person within sight substituting for nails. He is brutal to a family that HE KNOWS has been traumatized their entire existence. He touts JUSTICE and then attacks even the youngest member of the clan.
I did not like Poirot in this story. I did not care for the backstory, but most disturbing of all is that I did not care for the family involved. What sort of man would not break away from the torture being meted out by the “cruel step-mother” or would get married only to bring his wife into the situation. The only explanation offered is that they have no money to start a different life with and so are dependent upon the mother.
Yuck!
At first I was sad when Poirot didn’t make a major appearance in this book, and then I found myself wishing he hadn’t been involved at all. It took a week to force myself through this awful story, a sure sign of just how bad it is.
Reading this almost made me want to go out and start licking the hand rails that adorn the most used public spaces nearby, not a good thing to do during a Pandemic, but there you have it. show less

One of her best. Don't judge it by the TV version which bears almost no relation to the original and contains a great deal of silliness that would've made Agatha very angry indeed. The book has a great deal to say about the nature of evil, and the need for courage in the face of it. Some great little riffs that could be called post modern too - reference to DL Sayers "Unnatural death" (1927) (p141 "...I read in a book - an English Detective story...") and Colonel Carbury's request that Poirot make a timetable and a list ("I suppose you couldn't do the things the detective does in books?" p116). Great fun. Just leave out white slaving nuns and the head of John the Baptist - AC was much cleverer than that!

Abandoned at 20%

Oh dear. If the pedants who teach creative writing classes by rote ever needed support for their insistence on "Show, don't tell" as their unerring advice, then they need only make people read the first 20% of "Appointment With Death".

I've never been so bored by or so impatient with an Agatha Christie book. We are, for reasons that are not yet clear to me, in an hotel in Jerusalem. We start with Poirot overhearing and dismissing a fragment of a conversation between an American man and a woman, saying "She had to die". He then provides some light relief by remembering an amusing anecdote about Trollope, This was the only fun part of the read for me.

After that, we were treated to the full and terribly stilted and show more melodramatic conversation that followed the opening line that Poirot dismissed and we learn that murder is actually being contemplated.

Then Poirot disappears and we are presented with a truly bizarre and slightly scary spectacle and older, male French internationally recognised psychologist and a young, female, English, newly-qualified psychologist analysing an American family that they've barely met and confidently ascribing to them all kinds of pathological conditions with an assurance that is as dull and as difficult to believe as it sounds.

Only after the young British psychologist has invited a young woman, who she sees as vulnerable and immature, to her room at midnight and then tempted her with prospects of a degree of freedom that the poor young woman has never contemplated, do we come face to face with the monstrous bullying of the old matriarch that everyone is afraid of.

By that time I'd already given up.

How can someone of Christie's experience have knocked out such a clumsy and boring start to a novel?

I'll pass on this one, send it back to audible and take my chances with "Murder On The Orient Express" instead. show less

Reading Agatha Christie is like eating comfort food for me. I discovered her after devouring Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes mysteries and was captivated by Ms. Marple. But Poirot has beensomething of an acquired taste and one that I have lately acquired. This particular book is a wonderfully conceived psychological study of a tyrannical mother who controls the purse strings and the children she rules with an iron will. The book begins withtwo of her children plotting to kill her and 20 or so pages into it you understand why. Christie builds sympathy for the children and spouses until one becomes quite convinced that if one of them doesn't kill her, they should. Great characters, a wonderful plot, a couple of major plot twists, and a quirky show more little man with a high opinion of himself whose little gray cells have to work overtime to solve this one. show less

Si hoy me ha ganado Agatha ha sido solo porque se ha sacado al asesino de la chistera cual mago, no había manera de que nadie adivinara quien fue.

Tengo que reconocer que no puedo evitar siempre intentar pegar los puntos, poner atención a los detalles para, de esa manera, medio intentar ir adivinando quien es el asesino, con este libro fue totalmente imposible, mi querida Agatha se aventó la del “fue el mayordomo” cual reina de la intriga que es.

Pero más allá de saber quien es el asesino, en esta ocasión lo que me ha fascinado ha sido la psicología de los personajes, no tengo la menor duda de que esa era la finalidad de Christie, aunque muy a mi pesar tengo que decir que me quedo a deber en esa historia, me habría encantado show more conocer más detalles del escabroso modo de vida que llevaba la familia protagonista.

Tiene un final diferente con un tipo epilogo, cosa que no había visto antes en esta autora y eso me llamó mucho la atención.

Con Agatha no hay pierde, es un puerto seguro en donde llegar cuando no se que libro leer, además este libro es cortísimo, literal me lo he leído en una tarde. show less

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.
With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he’d overheard back in Jerusalem: ‘You see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?’ Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he’d ever met.

Once again murder disrupts Hercule Poirot's vacation. This time, he's in the Middle East. He first encounters the victim and several suspects in their Jerusalem hotel. Mrs. Boynton is more than just the stereotypical obnoxious American tourist. She's a tyrant who takes pleasure in manipulating the lives of her daughter and step-children. In some ways, it's not a surprise when Mrs. Boynton is murdered during an excursion to Petra. Did she push her children too far? Or could someone else in the party have had a motive for murdering the woman?

While some of the plot elements are similar to her other books, Christie adds some different twists. Even though I had read the book before, I had forgotten the culprit's identity, and Christie fooled show more me this time. The book is full of suspects and red herrings, yet the significant clues were delivered in a way that didn't raise my suspicion. This is a characteristic I take for granted in Christie's mysteries, but it's something a lot of other mystery writers don't manage to do. show less