Appointment with Death
Ratings77
Average rating3.7
Wieder eine sehr interessante Geschichte mit ausgeklügeltem Ende, allerdings fand ich diese Geschichte etwas weniger spannend als andere von Poirot.
Not my favorite. There's a bit too much... questionable attitudes. But, as they say in Finland, paha sai palkkansa. I like the 2008 tv series episode with Tim Curry as Lord Boynton, in love with his wife, and unable to see her true, disgusting, malevolent nature... and Elizabeth McGovern as Lady Westholme, the adventuress... both characters not in the book.
Most of Agatha Christie's novels have two parts: pre-murder and post-murder. The structure of this book is outlined in such a way. The first part of the book, around 40%, describes the characters, scenery and context. The second part of the book is about solving the murder, if one occurs.
Although the narrative starts with Poirot, he does not enter the stage until the second part of the book. As always, Poirot knows it all. In my re-read of all Agatha Christie novels, this one ranks in the top half of the Poirot series. It may not be the best, but it is decent. It may not be as famous as “Death on the Nile,” but it is at least just as enjoyable.
I'm not a big Christie fan I mostly picked this up because I want to read more in German and my father had a German copy lying around. I rarely get to read physical books these days and reading this in physical form felt good, I probably enjoyed this more because of this. If this was digital I might not have finished it. Either way it didn't feel like a waste of time because I was mainly reading to reactivate my German vocab - so, rolling the score up.
Even considering the release date this is absurdly sexist. It's not regular period-standard sexism , discussions on women and women's place in society and relationship with power has an overwhelming presence in the first half, and continues to be relevant in the second. I don't know much about Agatha Christie's life or politics to contextualize this, but it definitely felt like she had an agenda here and made the first half of this book an exercise in patience.
The second half is when Poirot makes a real appearance, the aforementioned issue isn't gone completely but much less on the foreground. The solution to the mystery itself wasn't very interesting, but the twist of basically everyone in the family thinking another did it and trying to cover for them was a really fun one. I wish it meandered less in the first half.
Also a random note about my German copy some things seem to have been changed rather arbitrarily, stuff I noticed.
Sarah's name was changed to Sylvia
Carol's name was changed to Carola
A few paragraphs about religion were removed
I listened to the BBC dramatisation version of this audio book and thoroughly enjoyed the voice acting. The story and the murder was set mostly in Petra, somewhere I truly wish to visit but even if I wasn't aware of this spectacular wonder, I would have had no trouble visualising the scene of the crime.
In normal Christie style, all of the evidence is laid out before us and I still was none the wiser as to the murderer until dutifully informed by Monsieur Poirot along with the rest of the dumb struck and gapping cast. I need to read more of these and maybe I will get a little wiser.