Book review: Five Little Pigs

Another Christie / Poirot; I'd avoided reading this before, under the assumption it was five short stories, but no; the "pigs" are people. The title isn't desperately appropriate but never mind. For spoilers read on.

I managed to guess that Caroline was protecting Angela; indeed, towards the end that is rubbed in perhaps a little too much. And yet it seems rather unfair that it is only made clear at the end; the Governess's last revelation should have come much earlier. But I didn't get beyond that first step. And to be fair, that could have been the answer, though I suppose it would have been a bit flat. To get to the true answer you have to suppose that the conversation, reported 16 years later, is entirely accurate and can have two interpretations; and you have to decide that C and the Painter have made up and Elsa overheard; and all this seems a bit much to me; and there is, as Poirot says at the end, no positive evidence for this at all. The bit about Merry being sure it was a cat meaning the smell of valerian meaning that Angela had pinched that, not the poison, again seems a bit far-fetched sixteen years later. As usual, because the characters are all somewhat generic placeholders, I had a hard time remembering who they were and telling Pippin and Merry apart.

I do owe this book the observation of passion in painting; which I use to devastating effect in my art review. And yet, in the end, the book rather destroys that, in that the Painter's passion is merely for the painting, not the subject. I regret that, which I think is an error on La Christie's part.