Sunday, January 16, 2011

Literary Criticism of Agatha Christie

Hey everyone! I just finished Hickory Dickory Death, by Agatha Christie. Like most of her other books, I  enjoyed it. Hercule Poirot, her famed Belgian detective, makes another appearance and solves the crime. This novel takes place in a student boarding house in the middle of London. Poirot is called in to investigate petty thefts and a deeper search into the events uncovers an illicit smuggling ring, and murder. From my own perspective I felt that the book was good, but not great. A few strong points were that Christie uses many different characters, which takes away from one guessing the culprit. Christie also gives enough evidence, but not too much for one to decipher the mystery themselves, which is what I enjoy. Lastly, Christie adheres to the setting, she organizes the crime and characters to fit the billing of a college boarding house. Some negatives were that although the heat of the mystery begins to pick up after the first murder, it slowly gets muddled in the following course. I noted a loss of focus almost; too many other crimes were found out which lead one to stray away from the original murder. These other events can confuse people as it's easy to lose track of the actual mystery. However, Christie does manage to tie in all the seemingly extraneous events at the end. I also felt that Christie made too many references to past books, which made it difficult to understand parts of the novel. At times, due to this, I couldn't understand the allusions she was trying to make. Other opinions of this novel include "Excellent characterizations and plotting, plus Poirot's brilliant detecting make this a classic," - Amazon customer review. A more negative review by another says,"it is one of Christie’s latter novels and some careless weaknesses in the plot do, unfortunately, show"- Shvoong book reviews





I got the other opinions from: 

-http://www.amazon.com/Hickory-Dickory-Death-Agatha-Christie/dp/B0006DB0JQ 
-http://www.shvoong.com/books/249049-hickory-dickory-death

3 comments:

  1. wow rohan you really love agatha christie's books! they look really interesting, i might just try one!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hmm... Hickory Dickory Death... sounds interesting... Yeah it looks like all you read is Agatha Christie. I think it should be your goal to read every single one of her books! Strive for it, I think you would like it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @ hannah: yeah i really like them! you should try them.
    @ favs: there are 80 books...so i hope so!

    ReplyDelete