I don’t want to say much specifically since that would be a spoiler, but I will say this: certain facts were deliberately misrepresented to the reader. And when the investigator comes into possession of the true version of those facts, those are not shared with the reader until the final unmasking of the villain. Thus, I feel I was lied to and then expected to congratulate the author when she revealed to me that I had been duped.
No thank you. I would rather have just been flogged about the head with the book rather than be fooled in this way. Had I not been reading it on my Kindle, I would have literally flung it across the room.
Sorry – but honestly, Agatha Christie has never been known for writing “fair” mysteries. Neither did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s a fairly distinctive genre, and some authors don’t even do it consistently. Personally, I think it should be a specific tag on the book’s spine, but that’s kind of hard to get people doing on a regular basis.
Actually, at the time she was a member of “The Detectives Club”, a group of mystery writers who had agreed to play fair in their mystery novels. They almost kicked her out when she wrote this novel but decided that the rest of her work was fair enough that she wouldn’t be thrown out for this one.
My favourite Agatha Christie novels have always been ‘On a Pale Horse’, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’, and ‘And Then There Were None’. I haven’t read this one, but it certainly sounds furstrating!!