I have gradually come to appreciate--dare I say even love?--Hercule Poirot. Even so, this one took three or four chapters to take to this one. At first I thought I couldn't even finish it, I just didn't like the flow of the first few chapters, introducing all these people (often nameless), the focus on a piece of jewelry, all this big build-up before introducing the main characters, etc. The story was oh-so-slow to start. But then at one point, everything started to click, started to move, and the novel became much better.
So what is this one
about? Well, let's start with the victim, Ruth Kettering. She's in a
very unhappy marriage. She's in love with someone else, her husband is
in lust with someone else. (Well, to be fair, I think she's in lust with
someone else too. Except I think she honestly thinks that that lust is
love, while I think the husband, Derek, is more realistic and realizes
it is what it is.) Her affair being somewhat mostly private and out of
the public's eyes, his not so much, he's "in lust" with an exotic
dancer. Ruth's father is an American millionaire, and he is pressuring
her to divorce her husband and start over. When the novel really opens,
he's gifting her with some very, very, very expensive and oh-so-rare
jewels, rubies. These are gems with a PAST and then some. Several weeks,
if not several months, go by, and the novel next opens with a train
trip. Ruth is on her way to meet her lover, her husband and his mistress
just happen to be on the same train, and yet supposedly no one knows
this. But perhaps it isn't right to start with the victim? Since the
main character, the main character besides Poirot, is a young woman
who's just recently inherited money. Katherine. This is truly more her
story. For she's on the train as well, and she met Ruth just hours
before her death. The two took a liking to one another, and Ruth
confided in her a good deal. Even told Katherine how uneasy she felt
about this trip, like something horrible was going to happen to her. It was easy to see why Katherine was so likable. It really was. This Agatha Christie novel was good. I wouldn't say that it's one of the best, best, best mystery novels ever. Christie wrote so many, so many GREAT novels, that it would be hard for this one to make the top five or top ten, but it is definitely a good novel. I liked it!!!
Read The Mystery of the Blue Train
- If you're a fan of Agatha Christie
- If you're a fan of Hercule Poirot
- If you're a fan of British mysteries, especially British mysteries set on a train
© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
1 comment:
Ah, I LOVE me some Ms. Christie! This one I haven't read but it looks great.
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