Book review: the Clocks

Another Christie. Quite good I think, but nonetheless I shall pick at flaws. We're back in the usual Christie-like England: secretarial bureau, rows of houses, detective inspectors and so on. Foreign intrudes (spoilers) in the source of the money to drive the plot - in a burst of invention the money is now Canadian instead of that old staple, the Americans - and in the source of Spying to drive the, ermm, sub-plot as it turns out to be. That's one of the disappoinments: the sub-plot turns out to be entirely disconnected to the real plot.

Anyway, someone is murdered, it isn't clear who he is. By bizarre coincidence "Colin Lamb" (who may be the same as “Adam Goodman” of Cat Among the Pigeons), is in the neighbourhood at the time, looking for spies. He has the usual scrap of paper from a predecessor telling him it's number 61; and the murder occurs at number 19; and somehow he fails to realise what I did instantly, that if you turn the paper over then... however, that's just a red herring, because while Miss Pebmarsh gets done for spying right at the end, that has nothing to do with the plot and is merely an excuse for CL being on scene. So that's deffo a defect.

The real plot I think works, almost entirely. And the manner of it being dreamt up I like. And the second-wife bit is nice.

The thing wrong, though, is the money. This is a significant inheritance from a rich man and yet our builder doesn't choose to move; or stop his business work. Even more mysteriously Miss Martindale continues to run her agency. I don't think that's believable. I think it works in Christie's mind because the inheritance is to her just a plot element; it isn't something you're supposed to try and use.

Minor: when Edna almost talked to the detective, and then once again, saying "well I don't think that could be true" I knew instantly that she would be killed. And lo, she was. Chsitie has used that too often. And there's also the rather improbable actually-being-prepared-to-strangle-someone-in-public, which is dubious. Ditto the third death. Indeed the "first death carefully planned, second and third deaths less so" is a bit of a recurring trope; and something of a poor reflection on Poirot: obviously he could not prevent the first death, but he could if he was quicker stop #2 and #3.