Dead Man's Folly

by Agatha Christie

Sunday, April 24, 2011

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I’m always surprised by how few of Christie’s novels I’ve read. I feel like I’ve read far more than I have. I picked this up on a visit to Greenway - Agatha Christie’s holiday home in Devon where the book is set. I enjoyed reading it - it’s all vaguely familiar but I don’t think I have read it before. I was especially pleased that the setting isn’t at all vague - Nasse House in the book seems to be a pretty accurate record of the Greenway estate, house, gardens and neighbours such as the youth hostel are all here just as they are in the real world.

I think Poirot is pretty dim sometimes and no one seems to pick up on a reasonably obvious point here, but that’s not really a problem. Making the reader feel clever for getting something the famous detective has missed is part of the fun of reading Christie.