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A review by book_concierge
They Do It with Mirrors by Agatha Christie
2.0
Jane Marple’s childhood friend and schoolmate, Ruth, expresses her concern about her sister, Carrie Louise, and asks Miss Marple to go for a visit and try to find out what is happening. Carrie Louise has always been rather idealistic and she hasn’t had much luck with her marriages, though she has been left with considerable wealth and a large country estate. Miss Marple arrives to find that Carrie Louise’s current husband has helped her turn the estate into a home for delinquent boys, with a large staff of doctors, therapists and teachers. Her daughter, granddaughter and two stepsons are also currently at the estate. Her former brother-in-law, Christian Gulbrandsen, who is a director of the trust that funds the estate, arrives unexpectedly to confer with her husband, Lewis Serrocold. Before they can meet with the other directors, however, Gulbrandsen is murdered and someone has tried to poison Carrie Louise. Just what is going on?
I love Agatha Christie and have enjoyed other Miss Marple mysteries, but this one misses the mark. It is far too convoluted, and yet very slow going despite everything that is happening. There is the central murder; the evidence of poisoning; a clearly unhinged paranoid patient who apparently is trusted enough to be Lewis Serrocold’s assistant; a possible love triangle between Carrie Louise’s granddaughter, her angry American husband, and at least one (if not both) of Carrie’s stepsons; and a juvenile delinquent who is a master lock picker and claims to have witnessed something important on one of his nocturnal jaunts away from the dormitory.
Christie has proved that she is more than capable of juggling many storylines to build suspense and thwart the reader’s efforts to figure out the solution before the author chooses to reveal it. But rather than tight plotting with twists and turns, this novel’s storyline seemed to just meander without purpose (other than to fill pages). The final reveal was done in the form of a letter, neatly tying up all loose ends in a couple of paragraphs rather than giving us the confrontation and reveal in real time. I had been bored for much of the book and was glad it was over, but I felt that I hadn’t read a Christie novel at all, but something written by a less-skilled author to imitate the Queen of Crime.
I love Agatha Christie and have enjoyed other Miss Marple mysteries, but this one misses the mark. It is far too convoluted, and yet very slow going despite everything that is happening. There is the central murder; the evidence of poisoning; a clearly unhinged paranoid patient who apparently is trusted enough to be Lewis Serrocold’s assistant; a possible love triangle between Carrie Louise’s granddaughter, her angry American husband, and at least one (if not both) of Carrie’s stepsons; and a juvenile delinquent who is a master lock picker and claims to have witnessed something important on one of his nocturnal jaunts away from the dormitory.
Christie has proved that she is more than capable of juggling many storylines to build suspense and thwart the reader’s efforts to figure out the solution before the author chooses to reveal it. But rather than tight plotting with twists and turns, this novel’s storyline seemed to just meander without purpose (other than to fill pages). The final reveal was done in the form of a letter, neatly tying up all loose ends in a couple of paragraphs rather than giving us the confrontation and reveal in real time. I had been bored for much of the book and was glad it was over, but I felt that I hadn’t read a Christie novel at all, but something written by a less-skilled author to imitate the Queen of Crime.