Taken at the Flood

During a London air raid, Poirot listens to a man ramble on about a young bride who, with her brother, survived an air raid while her husband and the servants died. The newlyweds had only just arrived in London after their wedding, and the widow became the heir to his fortune to the dismay of the husband's relatives who were financially dependent upon him. Poirot has a reason to recall this story a couple of years later when the widow and her in-laws are connected to a murder in their rural village. Instead of narrowing down the suspects, each new clue seems to add more confusion. It's a mystery only Poirot could solve.

This is more of a page-turner than is usual for a Christie novel. The foundation for the murder is laid in the prologue show more with the story that Poirot hears during the air raid. It seems more and more certain that something dreadful is looming, but it's not quite clear how events will play out. I did spot an obvious clue and I worked out part of the puzzle, but the ending still held a surprise or two for me. I found one aspect of the ending very disturbing and it lowered my overall rating for the book. show less

Summary: A young widow and her brother inherit a family fortune, stirring family resentments until a mysterious figure threatens blackmail and is found dead.

Gordon Cloade was the benefactor of the Cloade family. During the war, he meets a young widow, Rosaleen Underhay on a ship, and marries her. Two days after they arrive in England, all but Rosaleen and her brother David, who has joined the household, are killed in a bombing raid. Cloade had not had time to change his will to provide for both wife and family. This meant that Rosaleen, for the duration of her life inherited the income from the capital of Cloade’s life, depriving the family of needed support.

But all may not be as it seems with Rosaleen. Her first marriage had been an show more unhappy one. Her husband separated and then was reported dead. But a conversation where a Major Porter was overheard by Poirot, while sheltering in a club from a bombing raid, suggests that Underhay never died, but was abroad under the name of Enoch Arden, a reference to a Lord Tennyson poem about one thought dead who was not.

Christie introduces us to the various Cloades, in various states of insolvency. Jeremy, the lawyer, has been pilfering funds, and a reckoning approaches. Lionel is a physician, and has become a morphine addict, to the detriment of his finances. Rowley has been able to eke by as a farmer but had hoped for more, particularly as he anticipates marrying the village girl, Lynn Marchmont, who has returned to live with her mother after Lynn’s service as a WREN during the war.

Needless to say, many wish Rosaleen dead, or at least her claim on the Cloade fortune disproven. Then a mysterious figure shows up in town, identifying himself to David, Rosaleen’s brother, as Enoch Arden, and threatening blackmail. When Arden is found dead, Rowley, acting in the family’s interests asks Poirot to confirm the identity of the man named Arden. He calls on Porter, who testifies at the inquest that he knew Underhay and that the dead man was Underhay, despite Rosaleen’s denials. David, as prime suspect is arrested.

There’s a tangled web that Poirot has to unravel before all becomes clear. Two more die along the way. Poirot will say one is accidental, one is a suicide, and one is murder. But which is which and how are they all connected is for Poirot to discover, as he talks to people and learns things, while those around him underestimate his abilities.

I thought this a cleverly written mystery that also offered an instructive tale on the follies of depending on the wealth of a benefactor–from family or otherwise. Along the way, there is a diverting subplot as Lynn, finding Rowley somewhat dull after her war adventures, is drawn by the allure of the roguish David. I’m not sure I like Christie’s use of partner violence in this plot. As a mystery, I think this one of her better efforts, written at the height of her powers in 1948. show less

**SPOILERS**

Making a note to myself on this one so I consider skipping it next time I embark on my periodic Poirot fest.

As always Agatha Christie presents an ingenious tale with a few well/placed hints and red herrings. The story, too, is a poignant reflection on the deprivations experienced by so many people in Britain post-WWII (and elsewhere, although Britain experienced a very particular flavour of societal fracturing). Taken at the Flood captures a snapshot in time that reflects the bigger issues Christie’s generation was grappling with at the time. The story of the Cloades, struggling to maintain their genteel lifestyles due to war-induced shortages of both goods and people, not to mention increasing taxes and other financial show more impositions, is a microcosm of the massive shift experienced by well-heeled aristocratic or at least upper class types who had for generations taken for granted their big, lavish properties, their servants, their unearned inheritances and their luxurious way of life. Robbed of the beneficence they had thought was coming their way, the Cloades - some of whom do work but all of whom had relied on good old Uncle Gordon to help them out of any jams - are in all sorts of bother. Almost immediately after making a rash marriage abroad to a woman some 40 years his junior, Uncle Gordy only goes and gets himself killed in a London air raid without making a new will, leaving his new wife very rich indeed and his dependent rellies frothing at the mouth at the injustice of it all. Someone - but who? - will kill to make things right.

Just as we see the family struggle to adjust to poor or no domestic help, standing in queues for depressed pots of jam and sad-looking fish, and agonising over sheafs of unpayable bills, so too do we get a peek into the unrest of the returned servicewoman/working woman, as one character wrestles with the dissatisfaction of returning from four years of adventure, challenge and independence to the dull and predictable prospect of dependent, wifely servitude. It’s an insightful glimpse into the shifting role of women at a time of massive upheaval.

Despite this interesting social commentary - a step outside the never-changing cosy drawing room of so many of her stories - Christie undoes the good work with the casual way she depicts violence towards women as an acceptable, even desirable, part of marriage. Usually I’m happy to overlook ‘problematic’ language and attitudes reflective of their day (and there’s plenty of both to be founded dotted through Christie’s novels, which spanned the 1920s-1970s) when the overall story holds up well, but this time I just couldn’t swallow the repeated suggestion of domestic violence as somehow deserved, or adding a bit of excitement to life.

Eg: One of the central female characters is described as having drifted out of her first marriage because she was bored. “If he’d been a hearty sort of fellow who drank and beat her, it would have been all right. But he was rather an intellectual man who kept a large library in the wilds and who liked to talk metaphysics. So she drifted back to Cape Town again.”

Uh, no.

The ending offers up an even more aggravating example, where a character you thought might have been more savvy forgives the bloke in her life for almost choking her to death - saved only by Papa Poirot’s fortuitous appearance. Not only does she forgive him, but she goes all weak over him again BECAUSE he just about throttled her to death. “I DO love you, and you’ve had such a hell of a time…and I’ve never, really, cared very much for being safe,” she tells him. Suffice to say it made me want to throw the book across the room.

Christie was such a clever, wonderful writer and there’s still so much genius - and many little nuggets of wit and humour - to be marvelled over in her canon. Equally, her books are like a time capsule whose little domestic details and broad-brush characterisations reflect both the best and worst of the eras during which she wrote. Hercule Poirot remains one of my all-time favourite literary creations - it’s why I revisit every one of his stories every 10-15 years or so. But I was surprised and shocked - in this post-Me Too reading - to note how casually this kind of violence was described and how uncomfortably it sat with me, fiction or not. show less

With all due respect to Dame Christie:



The dysfunctional Cloade family have been dependent on Rich Uncle Gordon for decades, but then he marries a twenty-something Irish actress and has the lack of decency to die in the Blitz before he can write a new will, leaving his young widow in control of his fortune, although she's not allowed to touch the principal. Rosaleen seems a simple enough girl, but her brother David protects her from the wheedling of the Cloades. Let the seething commence.

Poirot is first drawn into the mess by one of the Mrs. Cloades who wants him to investigate whether Rosaleen's first husband is still alive. He declines because the family has no money with which to fund such an investigation. Then a would-be show more blackmailer is found murdered in the local inn and suspicion falls on David. This time, Poirot is brought in by Rowley Cloade, a nephew, who wants to find someone to identify whether the dead man is the first husband. Conveniently, Poirot knows of someone who can...having met him in the prologue. All fingers seem to point to David and the Cloades are all happy, but Poirot doesn't like "the shape" of the case. Will he solve it? (Of course he will.)

This is where I usually include the solution as a spoiler, but I cannot even this time. The main gist is that the whole terrible Cloade family gets a free pass from Poirot. There are no consequences for blackmail, bribery, embezzlement, manslaughter (accidental or not), attempted murder, tampering with a crime scene, or any other crimes, let alone for being all-around shitty, entitled people.

And with all the changes Goodreads has made recently, I can't figure out how to properly access other reviews to directly link them, but if you want to read more about the fuckery of this book, read the top two reviews by Sean Kennedy and Anne (whose reviews I follow, and who titled her review "Most baffling, batshit crazy ending EVER."). Yes, that. show less

Hercule Poirot is visited by a woman who has been reliably informed by a member of the spirit world that her brother-in-law's young widow, sole inheritor of the fortune that until his death in the London Blitz had been supporting his entire extended family, had a previous husband who is still alive. The sister-in-law wants Poirot to investigate and find him, so that the fortune can revert to her and the rest of her freeloading family, none of whom are apparently capable of supporting themselves.

This is another twisty mystery from Dame Agatha, and I should have known better than to boast on Liz's thread when I was only halfway through the book that I knew exactly how it was going to end. Yeah, not so much. The final chapters were a real show more rollercoaster ride, and if not for a truly unpleasant bit of domestic violence between the book's main romantic couple, who nevertheless end up together, I would have loved it. That bit was a little much even for me. show less

Family murder a la Styles and Hercule Poirot's Christmas with usual gaggle of sponging relatives as suspects, but the setting (battered, economically depressed postwar Britain--air raids, ration cards, and hard-up veterans all play a role) adds to the old ingredients an unexpected (for Christie) flavor of worldweary cynicism suggestive of noir. The solution to the mystery, if overly complex, is vintage Christie in its neat reversal of the reader's assumptions. But all is rather spoiled by the improbably "happy" ending Poirot (and Christie) laboriously contrive for a particularly repulsive character. But definitely recommended--this is vintage Christie that the casual fan is likely to have overlooked.

Other thoughts:

-The narrative show more downright cheats by referring to an impostor by "their" assumed name--definitely not sporting, Dame Agatha! The same thing happens in After the Funeral. There are ways around this--look at how ingeniously Christie contrives to be scrupulously fair and still fool us about a certain character's true identity in A Murder is Announced.

-Poirot, after an early appearance, is absent for half the book; this was becoming increasingly Christie's habit in the 40s (Sad Cypress, The Hollow, etc.).

-I don't recall Poirot's Catholic beliefs (or the subject of Catholicism generally) figuring so prominently in any other Christie. show less

A Hercule Poirot mystery. Once again I marvel at how good Christie was. Every clue is there, but placed so carefully and casually that you completely overlook it. She breaks the rules, when she wants to, and does it so well you would wonder why such a rule was in place. It would be a spoiler to say what the rule is in this case.