Murder in the Mews by Agatha Christie | Book Review

【 MURDER IN THE MEWS 】

This was half good, and half eh.

Genre: Mystery, Crime
Author: Agatha Christie
Published: March 1937
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 378 (paperback)

Murder in the Mews is a collection of four stories (which I didn’t realise at first) and I really enjoyed two of the stories, but could have gone without the other two.

This is made up of ‘Murder in the Mews’, ‘The Incredible Theft’, ‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ and ‘Triangle at Rhodes’. One and three were my favourites, and I’d individually rate them 4 and 4.5 stars. But for the theft and Rhodes I would rate them 3 and 2.5 respectively.

Those two didn’t work so well for me because while I enjoyed the sleuthing in ‘The Incredible Theft’ I thought the resolution was lacklustre. And while I enjoyed the revelation in ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, Poirot seems to know what’s going to happen so there’s no sleuthing and it’s super duper short. So eh.

But the other two are definitely worth it. Both revolve around suicides to varying degrees, and I think I generally prefer the post-death mystery in Agatha Christie novels. These stories have Poirot interviewing subjects to try and work out who did it, rather than a story leading up/ending in a murder.

‘Dead Man’s Mirror’ was my favourite of the collection and I would recommend if anything just reading that one alone. You can read all of these independently if you wanted to, they’re not related, and this story was just a good ol’ family mystery with an ending I didn’t see coming.