The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie | book review

【 THE ABC MURDERS 】

book #13 in the Hercule Poirot series

Genre: Cosy crime, Mystery
Audience: Adult
Author: Agatha Christie
Published: January 1936
Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 252 (paperback)

As expected, this was a lot of fun. Going into this, I knew this was a well-loved Christie mystery, but I didn’t know much more than that. This is a great head-scratcher because you feel like you’re trying just as hard as Poirot to work out what’s going on, but it’s so damn confounding.

The crux of this mystery, is that people are being methodically and alphabetically murdered. And Poirot keeps getting warnings when the murders are about to happen, so we trundle along with him as he tries with all his might to prevent the worst from happening.

I really enjoyed the frustration that Poirot experiences (that sounds mean) while up against this adversary. He can only apply so much logic to the unfurling mystery and there are many times where other characters half-joke that more murders need to happen before patterns can be confirmed (they’re not wrong, but how morbid!)

What was really fascinating for the reader in this one, is that we get the murderer’s perspective through the occasional letter. Here and there, the narrative is interrupted by a snippet of scene to show what the murderer is up to in planning their next move. It’s a strange thing to include and it plays its part well for building up the mystery (you wouldn’t think it, but it really does).

The resolution was good and fun, though I had just read this straight off the back of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd so it lost just a little bit of wonder in not being quite as a clever as that. It has a strange way of coming about to its conclusion, but things aren’t actually done when you’d think they should be.

It’s always good fun to have a few layers of mystery to unravel in an Agatha Christie, and this certainly delivers on that front. I enjoyed the entirely unique murder ‘theme’, as it were, with the train timetables and alphabetical approach – I’ve certainly never read anything like that and it made this gloriously fascinating. I’d definitely rate it as one of her good, puzzling mysteries but it doesn’t quite make it within her hall of fame (as judged by yours truly).