Submitted by rafasimoes t3_11avdc5 in books
I just finished reading the book and loved it. My favorite thing about it was that there was no possible explanation. It was like there was no culprit, and all ten of them were consumed by their own guilt.
And then I get to the epilogue and to my surprise Christie reveals the killer, and it left me really underwhelmed.
It might sound weird, but she created a mystery so good, i kinda didn't want it to be solved. Anyone else feels like this??
I think people did riot over “The Colorado Kid”.
I think if she wrote a mystery and couldn’t prove a solution that would make her a bad mystery writer. I could come up with a great locked door mystery if I didn’t have to have solution.
It’s usually aliens.
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You should actually check out some short Mystery Stories instead of mystery books.
I’m a huge mystery reader — but I would be absolutely angry if I spent time reading a long form mystery only to have the author not reveal who it was.
Personally I love Agatha’s murderers, they’re all characters and stereotypes on their own with vile murderous twists that make them so interesting. I personally love the murderer of ATTWN.
However, in short mystery works, I’ve found it much easier to accept the “Author didn’t reveal it” because in short form I’m much more inclined to see the entire puzzle laid out in under 50 pages. I’m much more likely to enjoy a “no reveal” that way.
I get your point, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that, at least to me, this book didn't feel like a mystery. It felt somewhat like a horror story, something like The Turn of The Screw. I'm not saying i thought there were ghosts involved, just that the tone was very horror-like, and that their situation was, to me, a manifestation of their collective internal guilt.
I think that's why the epilogue was such a betrayal to me.
You know what, it might be that Agatha was truly creating more of a Thriller than a mystery in this one! Maybe you’re more into Thrillers than cozy mysteries?
Your comment really resonated with me— could you possibly list some of your favorite mystery short stories?
Can i be completely honest with you? I actually prefer long-form mysteries like Christie and others.
I really like short stories and I notice that a lot of them have a similar style of denouement so that’s why I suggested it!
If you find any good ones! Feel free to let me know!
If you read a lot of mysteries you realize that a good writer can make almost any solution work in any murder. It's completely arbitrary, really. So I read them to enjoy the characters and the tone and the feel of the work (for lack of a better term) not to see whodunit.
Check out "The Poisoned Chocolates Case" by Anthony Berkeley for the ultimate example of this.
But that is exactly my issue. I think that revealing the murderer was betraying the tone and feel she had established. To me this one felt a lot more like a horror book than her other books.
And thanks, i will check it out
Also, if she had published a story without revealing the kidder, Murder of Roger Ackroyd would have immediately been relegated to "second most controversial mystery by Agatha Christie"
Note that Poisoned Chocolate Case is sort of a satire of murder mysteries, it almost makes fun of the genre.
Yeah any character could be made the murderer. It’s really about the message and the thread that connects the characters and the artistic originality of the motive.
Spoilers for a super old novel but I think what you might be reacting to is the fact that, honestly, the reveal doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in this one. Once again spoiler warning but the killer fakes his death midway through the story to throw off suspicion and they say he pulls it off with the help of the doctor, but he supposedly dies from a gunshot wound to the head. His body is on full display as the doctor examines him so it’s not like his body was hidden from examination.
I read it a few years back so correct me if I’m misremembering the details but I remember being very let down because I’d always heard this novel was one of the pinnacles of murder mysteries, but it’s just SO hard for me to believe that a gunshot wound to the head was successfully faked when so many other ways of “dying” would have worked much better.
I read it a few months back. If I recall, the setup is that it is dark in the house at the time, lights went out so they only have candles I think, making it a little easier to pass off the cover up. Plus, that character is like the 5th (?) to die so can say that those remaining were pretty accepting that he’d be dead.
That said, when I was reading it, I was immediately suspicious of that death because of the way it was described. I didn’t quite get to the conclusion, but thought it was odd.
I 100% agree with you
A good mystery is a wonderful consumable and then it's more or less done with. Leaving the door open without a solution but a well crafted story that many or even all suspects are equally valid allows it to linger forever like a different kind of genre. I kind of agree if that was her plan she could have done so and maybe even leaned into it a bit harder in the story to emphasize themes to ponder. As it is the prototype for many modern mystery formats I wonder how pop culture would have been different though.
I agree. If there had been multiple killers instead of one I would have liked it more
I confess, this is one where I prefer the movie.
I was SO SURPRISED that I liked the movie mode especially because it ends on a happier tone which I usually don’t like!
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entropynchaos t1_j9ue9mq wrote
I think most mystery readers would riot if the mystery weren’t solved. For that you need to be a lit writer and she wasn’t; she was a genre writer.