Elephants Can Remember
Ratings64
Average rating3.4
E-book exclusive extras:1) Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on Elephants Can Remember;2) "The Poirots": the complete guide to all the cases of the great Belgian detective."The Ravenscrofts didn’t seem that kind of person. They seemed well balanced and placid…" And yet, twelve years earlier, the husband had shot the wife, and then himself — or perhaps it was the other way around, since sets of both of their fingerprints were on the gun, and the gun had fallen between them. The case haunts Ariadne Oliver, who had been a friend of the couple. The famous mystery novelist desires this real-life mystery solved, and calls upon Hercule Poirot to help her do so. Poirot is now a very old man, but his mind is as nimble and as sharp as ever and can still penetrate deep into the shadows. But as Poirot and Mrs Oliver and Superintendent Spence reopen the long-closed case, a startling discovery awaits them. And if memory serves Poirot (and it does!), crime — like history — has a tendency to repeat itself.
Series
Featured Series
47 primary books98 released books#42 in Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is a 98-book series with 47 released primary works first released in -2100 with contributions by Agatha Christie, Hugh Fraser, and Agata Kristi.
Series
8 primary books#8 in Ariadne Oliver
Ariadne Oliver is a 8-book series with 8 released primary works first released in 1920 with contributions by Agatha Christie.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
Halfway through the book, when the twin sister is introduced, the solution becomes intuitively apparent. Since every Christie that I had read before always brought up an ingenious solution, I dismissed it, thinking that it couldn't be this obvious.
Unfortunately, it came out to be true, and that's the worst thing I can say about a Christie novel. The way it was structured and the stodgy dialogue pretty much gave the mystery away quite some time before the conclusion. You could extract a soap drama from the melodramatic ‘reveal' which felt cheesy enough to be used for a Margherita pizza.
Elephants can remember but this was a forgettable book.
I loved the little moments with Mrs Oliver, and her approach to solving crime. However–
slight spoilers ahead–
I was hoping for another twist at the end. I saw the main twist coming, and I was actually expecting the plot to go one step further. In the end, there were several threads left open that could have really gone together, and it felt like they'd been neglected.
I'm definitely not the first reviewer to say that, and it's totally understandable given how late in Christie's career this came out. I still had fun with it as a character study, so my advice is just be along for the ride and don't put too much stress on the puzzle! :)
I am coming very close to finishing all of Christie's mysteries chronologically. Compared to some of her others, this one is bleh. Very predictable (identical twins...hmm...) and repetitive (mention the elephant metaphor one more time...) with lots of ideology about how crime is genetic. Not her best.
