Poirot Retrospective #9: Lord Edgeware Dies

 

Poirot Retrospective #9: Lord Edgeware Dies

This is a tough one to judge. I could never tell, even at the very end, whether I liked it or disliked it.

First, though: it opens on a VERY sour note. A drunk dinner guest comments about how all yellow and brown people look identically ugly (using much worse language) ... then Poirot makes a comment to Hastings where the bottom line is that an actress is likely to die from greed because she's Jewish and thus loves money too much (!!!). This Jewish obsession with money is advanced several times as a legitimate motive, too.

The book eases up a bit after that, but the attitude is pervasive. It's very hard to tell if Christie is judging these people via the racism/antisemitism (the drunk guest is a lout), or if she is simply reflecting the era, or if she believes these things.

Second - the mystery is both clever and stupid. I got the murderer wrong - I ate up every red herring - but at the same time, the murder is impossibly convoluted and complicated. In her better books, Christie presents deceptively complex plots - but they are often reduced to rather simple events via one of Poirot's famous moments of realization or some other twist. In this one, the plot remains incredibly arcane and simply too convenient at multiple points.

I recently read an introduction to the Poirot novel After the Funeral where the author Sophie Hannah bemoans how people always criticize Christie novels as "implausible" when what they really mean is "I don't know anyone this could happen to," or "this is outside my realm of experience." She maintains (rightly) that implausible should be reserved for plots that could not happen. I think that might be the case here. I left the book unconvinced the murder could actually occur as stated.

Third - Poirot REALLY struggles in this one. He doesn't discover the truth until basically the last pages, and then the killer just confesses in a tremendously improbable way. Then Hastings says "Then I had to suddenly go to Argentina, but trust me, Poirot was right and everything was just as he said, The End." What!? Poirot is the guy who weeded out the truth from a dozen liars on the Orient Express, and THIS case befuddles him? Bah!

Fourth - the characters are a real mixed bag. Christie does so-so with all the various archetypes she loves to work with (the poor fat maid, who has corns on her feet from walking too much ... the drunk scion who inherits a title he's unworthy to hold and loves to outwit the police ... the vicious dowager duchess, who talks down to everyone as a matter of habit ... etc). But several of the characters are very thin, including poor Inspector Japp, who comes across as one step above a tree stump in terms of intelligence. All his dialog is "Huh? You sure?" and "Wut! Impossible!"

Yet, as before, it had its moments. There is only one small moment when Christie messes with the reader - someone tells Poirot that if he writes about this case, he should call it "Lord Edgeware Dies" (ha!), which was rather funny. But on the whole I felt this wasn't executed very well. A harebrained idea taken too far.