Dumb witness

 Series: Hercule Poirot #16 

Author: Agatha Christie

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Original publication date: July 5th, 1937

Book description: Everyone blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th… by which time Emily was already dead.

Thoughts:

It starts off very interesting again. First, we follow the everyday life of Emily an old lady, and her existing family members. She gets into a bit of fright due to an unfortunate accident. The thing is she does not believe it to be a simple accident. So she writes a note to Mr. Poirot, but the note for some reason took a bit of time to reach him. When Poirot gets the letter, he and Mr. Hastings (yes he is back in this one) take a small trip to visit the lady who wrote the letter. The message in the letter was not astonishing at all, it was very vague but that did not stop the Belgium detective from being interested in it. What was so interesting was that the letter was dated a few weeks old. 

When they arrive in the town, the first they notice is that the house they went to visit is up for sale or lease. They go to the company in charge of it and they get to know the old lady owner there has died of natural causes. 

Poirot decides to stay and investigate what happened, he needs to know why the letter was written and why it arrived so delayed. Along the way, they behave for the first time like private detectives. They go around interviewing the relations and members of the community but they do not introduce themselves truthfully. They go around pretending to be several people having a passing interest in the family but not letting them know he is actually interested in old Emily specifically. 

This is one of those times we see Poirot lie and scheme to try to get his way, he is not even a bit guilty at all. It is full of funny anecdotes and pieces being put together by the Belgium detective and you are like Hastings, just along for the ride. 

The ending was not what I expected, I was very sure of the guilty party was and in the end, I was surprised because it was resolved in a very different way. This is already a signature feature of the stories by Christie. Still, I continue to be surprised. 

Poirot does feel more lovable and now that Hastings is sometimes missing from the story I find it so comforting to see him return in the odd stories here and there. Though he is not as important as I initially thought, we get nothing of his life, not even mentions of his wife and how his life is going on other than the things that happen to him as he is around Poirot and whatever investigation they have at the moment. Now that I stop to think about it, we don't get much about the life of any of the detectives either, so maybe that is the style Christie is going for. We do not know anything about Poirot or Hastings' lives, only a few details as they are involved in their current case. The interesting choice really. 

Disclaimer: This is a very plot-driven story and it feels episodic. We don't have any tie ins between the cases. Think it like a CSI each book is a new story as the case is different but unlike the tv series we don't get what happens to the MC in their personal life between episode and episode.

I gave this:

The reason lately the books are just ok is that they all seem to follow the same formula. They are good, but they no longer feel as astounding as they did initially. I will still try to reread this work at some point, the stories are still very well done. I see people loving this type of book (mystery/thriller) and picking one of them up and simply falling for it immmediately.