Man in the Brown Suit - Agatha Christie

Being one of the novels I had somehow missed,  back when I was on a Christie reading spree in my late teens ( inspired by my mother being a huge fan of her ), I finally managed to 'read' it via an audio book. This, surely is more in line of a thriller, than a classic detective story, where Poirot or Ms. Maple sits,  and reflects. A little bit of 'googling' revealed that, what I remember to be one of her best works, namely "The Secret Adversary" was published in 1922. Man in the Brown suit, was published in 1924, and in contrast was quite weak, I thought. Probably her keenness to keep the tempo of a fast moving thriller, the authoress has taken liberties with the plot, that are far fetched and thus, unconvincing. True, Christie has achieved relative success by keeping the readers interested. But, the obvious weak concessions that the authoress has towards building her plot, was too much for me, to like this work as a whole.

The raw usage of certain words which would hold this work in contempt today, shows the distance that the world has traveled over the last 100 years.

"A black face grinned into mine - a devil's face. I thought it, and screamed out."

 Yet, after 100 years, racism hasn't left the world and we have its instances of its ugly head raising every now and then - as the present day incidents show.

The tone of the danger loving girl, who scorns the safety of a stable man, runs through the narration like a background tune. Christie, her self in her mid thirties at the time, may have been trying to project a sense of  spunk in her characters, which doesn't sound convincing overall. On the side of positives, the character of Sir Eustace Peddlar is a huge success.

I returned to Christie after 20 odd years, with "Curtains: Poirot's Last Case", recently - that held up largely as a solid work, in spite of a few stitch marks which were apparent as being stretches. In contrast, in "Man in the Brown Suit",  left me in no doubt that it is time I was through, reading Agatha Christie. Once, one reads an author of he caliber of John Le Carre, to fulfill her thirst of thrillers and espionage, the plots and weaving of Christie come up short. But, she had served me well in instilling a love for reading narrations based on traditional England which led me to look up authors like  E.M. Forster  - and appreciate such works as Howard's End and A Room with a View, - this love for British authors continues to date, with  appreciation of other English authors like Hilary Mantel or Julian Barnes, later. Almost all  authors, open possible paths for future reads, and Agatha Christie definitely served well in that regard.

Curtain: Poirot's Last Case - Agatha Christie

I think I read Agatha Christie, last, around 23-24 years back. This particular book, I think I read when I was in my late teens. While I am yet to read "The Man in the Brown Suit", a book that I wanted to reread  was, Curtains: Poirot's Last Case. I felt that it deserved a settled reading ( the last time was a rushed reading  from a copy my mother has borrowed from the Public Library - and there were missing pages, I recall ).

So, read it I did - this time, in audio form. I would've finished this about two months back, but then the lockdown resulted in a total stop to audio books. But over the last few days I have been able to 'read' 30 minutes here - there. But today, I just had to sit through that last 70 minutes and see it through, for it was engrossing - even while it was during a second reading. I had not forgotten Poirot's role, although I've forgotten who the "perfect murderer" was. I suppose that in her own way Christie was ahead of her time, with some of the suppositions in her books. For example, Dr. Franklin's unconventional pronouncements  once life offered him a second chance - or her outlook towards the thoughts of young people, with all their life in front of them. I concede, that I felt that Franklin not caring how this opportunity came about was rather  crass, in judgement of the outlook of the next generation as it were - and Christie's reading of this was, to me, was possibly questionable. However she doesn't fail to capture the human factor, which Christie always touches on,  that holds its attractions. True, there are the usual stretches and stitches of conveniences that "bring about" the build up of  the plot (i.e. 'the gun' here for instance, or the incident of  Allerton's 'suggestions' during his London trip ). Despite the contrived parts, one cannot help  appreciating  it for the subtle philosophical bent the book is rich with. To think, that Dame Christie had given thought to what coud be perfect murder, and has indeed succeeded in identifying it with acceptable conviction ( for example it  has not shown 100% success rate ), is proof of the level of thought she had given it. Further, Poirot's dilemma, shows Christie's recognition of the absence of easy decisions in the matter of right and wrong. Poirot in his last moment confessing that he was not sure, is quite modern in outlook - for after all it is book written by her in her 40s, although released in 1975.

Overall it is a delightful read, despite its limitations, and it is Agatha Christie at best.
Glad that I returned to it after all these years.
What a blessing audio books are - what a differentiator time  is too - from reading a dog eared, page missing, "settled for" - to being narrated to, behind the wheel, for the lack of a better pass time.