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Iatroblast t1_j1rnv4j wrote

Anybody can chime in here. What are your favorite Christie novels? I loved her in middle/high school and now I’m in my early 30s I started grabbing the occasional Christie from the library and a few of them have fallen really flat.

The ones I haven’t liked: Mysterious Affair at Styles, the Moving Finger

Ones I think I remember liking: the Clocks, The ABC Murders, Murder on the Orient Express, and And then there were None.

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chickzilla t1_j1rpt29 wrote

Endless Night is nearly a perfect story, in my opinion. Just perfection. Even knowing it, one can reread it.

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elthepenguin t1_j1rpwqs wrote

For me it’s probably The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, if I had to pick one. Because the solution blew me away the most.

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mrnicebobby t1_j1usji6 wrote

Yes! Extremely meta! I was lucky enough to suggest this one to a book club I was a part of, and one of the people there felt so betrayed about the revelation at the end… I can’t elaborate more because of spoiler territory, but suffice to say everybody else enjoyed both the book and this guy’s exasperation.

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Hartastic t1_j1toucf wrote

Mysterious Affair at Styles is one of the weaker Poirots, IMHO (also the first, so, maybe fair), although having read it pays off a bit if you ever make it as far as Curtain, which is the last Poirot and I think hits differently if you've read most of the other Poirots before it, especially the ones that include Hastings.

A few others I liked not on your list that I liked: Cards on the Table, Five Little Pigs, Death on the Nile.

The only one of the Poirot books in my opinion that is really bad is The Big Four, and maybe even that is just because it wasn't what I wanted. It's... basically a James Bond novel, written a generation before there were James Bond novels, except instead of James Bond as the international super spy it's... Poirot for some reason.

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Iatroblast t1_j1utq4f wrote

Nice that’s good to hear. I read Styles after a hiatus of many years and felt pretty deflated about Christie, who I had previously enjoyed. Then I read the Moving Finger and it was a little better, still not very good, but it was my first Marple story and she was hardly in it at all!

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Hartastic t1_j1ux02q wrote

Is Moving Finger the one where Miss Marple doesn't show up until like 70% of the way through the book?

I don't mind Miss Marple as a character but sometimes it does feel like Christie has to contrive a bit to justify why she needs to / can solve a mystery. Poirot, at least, was this famous former professional police officer / detective.

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