Tannat

Series: Poirot #11

*Applause.*

I feel a bit as if this was Christie’s response to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. As in that book, our detective disappears near the beginning only to reappear halfway through. Instead of Poirot, we get to witness the sleuthing talents of Sir Charles Cartwright (an actor), “Egg” Lytton Gore (a young-ish woman), and Mr. Satterthwaite (no idea how to pronounce it, but he seemed like a male, less confused version of Miss Marple).

I’ll admit I was completely taken in and I loved how the solution to the mystery unfolded. We saw less of Poirot, admittedly, but you know how he hates doing legwork so it’s just as well that it was other people running around investigating at first. I quite liked Mr. Satterthwaite, and Mrs. Dacres’ continual use of “penetrating” to describe a dress style for Egg was amusing. Honestly, I’m continually surprised by some of the vocabulary used in the 1930s and how modern-sounding it is. Of course, in this case my amusement stems from the use of the word rather than any modern connotations but the style of the character is pretty timeless. For context, she’s a fashionista dressmaker.

I read this for booklikes-opoly square Main Street 11 “Read a book that takes place between 1945 and 1965 or that was written by an author who was born before 1955”. Agatha Christie was definitely born before 1955. At 272 pages, I’m awarded another $3, which topples me over the $100 mark to give me a bank balance of $101.

Comment/question on the number of pages:

The print edition of this printing is listed as 272 pages while Kindle/Kobo list it as 224. It felt really short though, and my ereader claimed I finished it in less than 4 hours (I’m not sure I trust its accuracy although it’s been better behaved in the last few days). So should I be using the 201-400 page bin or should I be using the 101-200 page bin? Apparently it’s only 65k words. I feel that perhaps I’m overestimating the funds I should be receiving.

In contrast, Fortune Like the Moon (my last read) is listed as 252 pages and 73k words at Kobo.