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jenn

Murder by Death

I read cozy and historical mysteries, a bit of Paranormal/UF, and to mix it up, I read science and gardening books on occasion.

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks - DNF... sort of.

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks - Agatha Christie, John Curran

I stopped reading this book after about a hundred pages - not because it wasn't good, it was, but because I haven't read all of Christie's canon yet, and this books is 100% geared towards those that have (or have at least read a majority of it).  The author states from the beginning that there are massive plot spoilers throughout every chapter; he even goes so far as to list the books a particular chapter is going to spoil. 

 

I didn't care about the plot spoilers; when it comes time for me to catch up on Christie's canon, I will have long since forgotten who did what to whom (I've read some of her books twice - The Body in the Library for one - and I still can't remember who the murderer was). The fact of the matter, and why I DNF'd the rest of the book, was that Christie's notebooks and the author's commentary on them are largely meaningless to anyone who isn't familiar with the particular work in question.

 

I did read the two short Poirot stories at the end, (I'll review them under separate posts) and what I did read at the beginning was interesting and well written.  If you're a huge Christie fan and know her work well, I'd recommend this book as a way of delving deeper into how this master of mystery's mind worked.  Otherwise, most of the book reads a bit like someone's coded grocery list.