Information
Finished reading date: January 22nd, 2023
My rating (out of 5): ⭐️ ⭐️
Genre(s): Mystery, spy, thriller
Summary
Hercule Poirot and his companion Captain Hastings are reunited once more in this Christie thriller. An unscheduled visit from Hastings sets off a spiral of unusual events that led to the discovery of a secret society that has the entire world on marionette strings, “The Big Four.” Poirot has to discover the identity of each of its four members and seeks to put an end to their rule. Can four powerful and intelligent characters win against the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot and his faithful Hastings?
Analysis Rant
This was a wild ride and not in the best way. While I still ultimately gave it two stars, it’s likely just because it’s a Christie, and I can take nonsense from her more than from other writers. In terms of writing, this was a bit of a hot mess, though. The chapters read more like short stories, and much of the mystery of the story was done haphazardly. Even though the Big Four were supposed to be these powerful and mysterious characters, their identities were either revealed extremely quickly without any chance to build up suspense or context of who these people were or were too obvious to figure out given the clues. Christie’s mysteries tend to ask the questions: who killed whom, and why? Relatively standard for a mystery of that time period. And even nowadays, that’s often still a root question to the murder mystery. Her books tend to follow the pattern of: character and setting introduction, murder, and then the ongoing process of revealing who did it. One of my favorite things about a Christie novel is that it’s not a given that I will be able to figure out whodunnit, though. She makes you work for it. She keeps things back. She slowly introduces hints amongst red herrings, giving us just enough info to be able to generate ideas ourselves but not so much that we could fully guess with certainty who the killer is.
In this novel, the identity of the “killers” are quite literally in the title. Without even reading a word, we know who the murderers are. It indeed leads with a murder, but we have zero attachment or introduction to the victim. He just shows up to introduce the Big Four and then dies rather unceremoniously. With all that in mind, I assume this book was meant to stray away from those traditional questions, and instead, make us want to ask: “Who are the Big Four?” And yet, rather than staying true to her usual methods, she kinda blurts out the answers or just makes it really obvious who their identities are, but at the same time, even by the end of the book, we know nothing about them. We know their names and professions, but we don’t know them. Each chapter is like a mini-mystery but it all points back to the Big Four, so in that way, there is at least consistency in topic, but the flow is awful, randomly speeding up and slowing down at the oddest of paces. Characters are just thrown around and thrown away in an attempt to show their reach and create more suspense around the Big Four, but really, it felt unnecessary.
On top of that, or rather, along with that, there just seems to be a lack of planning and building with the book. This book had (almost) zero details and contextualization. Everything was written as fact. “They were the secret head of China”… without explaining what any of that means. “They were a famous scientist working with dangerous materials”… without giving hardly any detail of her work or the importance (or the danger) of it. It was like she was just saying, “They are bad guys! Because they are! They do bad things!” and then, “Sic em’, Poirot!” For sure, I think writers can get lost in description, detail, and contextualization, but this utter lack completely detracted from building any type of suspense. Sure, maybe their power reached further than the usual murderers in her book, but the only thing telling us that was the exposition. And even the exposition was extremely lacking. The crimes themselves were not much more extravagant than basic murder and kidnapping.
There seems to be some reason for this inconsistency, though. The book is actually a flung-together collection of a series of short stories that Christie wrote for a magazine. I don’t think it was ever meant to be a book in the first place, and it shows… everywhere. It’s just splattered all over the place like a bad spaghetti sauce spill.
The ending, as well, didn’t make it any better. Poirot is throwing out some crazy shenanigans in the attempt to catch these killers, and it just feels very wrong. It is not simply a matter of “his little grey cells” against theirs, but rather, it’s all about the action and the tricks. This is against everything I have read from Poirot so far, as it makes him into almost a spy archetype rather than a retired Belgian detective who shows up or winds up on a murder scene and solves the crime with his intelligence and detective work. It’s. Just. Weird. Also, I still don’t understand what really happened in the end, and I’m not sure that I want to for what that would mean for Poirot’s character. The story itself was a very dramatic stage of “Poirot v. the Big Four.” In the process of adding drama and action, Christie lost her meaning and the opportunity to explain victim and criminal psychology, to dive into the actual “whys” and “hows” of things. This book was just a whole lot of “what.”
I’m kinda reminded of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, which was also a serialization for a magazine (although I liked that better and it suited Dumas’ strengths of pop fiction). The fast-paced and quick conflict resolution necessary for each chapter leaves very little space for character development… or even story development. While it worked reasonably well for Dumas’ story, the characteristics that I love about Christie’s works, such as its slow build, were very much sacrificed.
Finally, and while it’s a sign of the times, there was racist language scattered about that was extremely not lovely to read. This happened a few times with Sherlock Holmes books as well, and while I don’t like it, I do appreciate the editors for not necessarily editing these books to remove that type of language. Editing history and texts feels like erasing history, and I believe it’s necessary to know so that we can know better.
So, I guess the question ends up being: what did I like about it then? To be honest, it’s fluff. But it’s my happy fluff. And at the end of the day, I still learned something from her. As well, as a writer, I appreciate her trying out something new… although, as a reader, I wouldn’t mind if she just stuck to what she is best at.
Writer’s Takeaway
- It’s not necessary to know or explain everything, but know when a detail adds the right amount of realism to the situation.
- “Don’t tell us. Show us.” But also, tell us! Especially when it’s important for connection and context and depth. Characters without context will mean very little to us when they die… or do anything, for that matter.
- What the readers are reading through exposition and what the readers are seeing happen in the story need to match.
- An utter lack of detail and context creates a lack of realism. Even escapist fiction has its limits.
- Unless there is actually a plan for it from the beginning (or proper editing after the draft), don’t just string stories together within each chapter; this creates a disconnection from chapter to chapter, and it is difficult to maintain tone, proper character and world-building, and conflict progression and completion.
- Being inconsistent without reason or background with your well-known characters is a good way to make fans angry at you. That’s not to say you can’t make them change. But it has to make sense. The “why” matters. Readers can get angry on behalf of the character when something bad happens to them which causes them to change, but at least it makes sense and is consistent. They are just being empathetic to a human experience in that case. Inconsistency for the sake of it just feels lazy and feels like it does a disservice to the character.
Annotated Passages
“If he was sane, what would he be doing in a lunatic asylum? They all say they’re sane, you know.”
→ Thought of Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry”
“… the men who loom most largely in the public eye are men of little or no personality. They are marionettes who dance to the wires pulled by a master hand…”
→ Don’t be fooled by visibility; true power is often hidden
→ Sounds a little bit conspiratorial when I put it that way though…
“If you are doubly burdened, first by acute shyness, and secondly by only seeing the right thing to do or say twenty-four hours later, what can you do? Only write about quick-witted men and resourceful girls, whose reactions are like greased lightning…”
→ This was written by A. C. in an interview, and I loved it.
→ In the same way that books allow readers to try on different identities or role-play a particular situation, the writer may experience the same thing.
→ It just shows that we, as writers, can use our own insecurities and weaknesses as a way of living out a dream… also, if we wish to be more of something, it’s likely someone else is feeling the same thing
→ Which is interesting, because I feel like nowadays, rather than creating our “ideal” selves with our characters, we are putting more vulnerability and authenticity into our characters
→ So, now, we are just writing more about who we truly are and our identity…? Our true feelings, darknesses, weaknesses, rather than creating the most perfect form
→ While there will always be demand for perfection, perfection is exhausting to even read about. Humanity shown through relatable, damaged characters has definite appeal
→ And yet, Poirot has his own form of damage, as well; so, in some ways, she smoothed out a “weakness” of hers, but also, equally, added the damage that might come with it (his OCD-type behavior)
“In spite of [Poirot’s] vanity he often chooses deliberately to stand aside and let the main drama develop. He says, in effect, ‘It is their story—let them show you why and how this happened.” He knows, all right, that the star part is going to be his later. He may make his appearance at the very end of the first act, but he will take the centre of the stage in the second act, and his big scene at the end of the third act is a mathematical certainty.’
→ Totally agree about his character, and I love hearing her talk about him like he is a real person… and yet… for thissssssssss booooooook… *cries in book nerd*
Book Recommendations (and Mentioned Books)
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
- Sherlock Holmes series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
- The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson