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STYLES_OF_CARDBOARD

                                     April 20, 2006

Agatha Christie - "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920)

More or less readable, but only just. The setup for the
mystery involves multiple people with potential marital
scandals, all coming to head at the same time.  The
resolution has different people skulking around acting
independantly at cross-purposes, all on the same night,
without no reason given for the coincidence.

                  It's also perhaps a mild
                  disappointment that the guilty
                  party is a conspiracy: two
                  characters acting in concert,
                  concealing their alliance.

Probably the most interesting thing is Poriot and his
absence of character.  He's a collection of funny
ticks: a dandy who straightens vases compulsively, and
emits frenchisms (he's Belgian) every other sentence.

But compare this to John Dickson Carr's
"Gideon Fell" or "Sir H.M. Merrivale",
who are similar collections of funny
ticks, and yet they add up to something
that registers a little more like
character.

And still further along that axis, consider
Nero Wolfe: quirk-upon-quirk, and yet that
cantankerous bellowing, that streak of
infantile laziness, it all adds up to a
remarkably believeable portrait.

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