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.